'Alright residents, we all know that one of the greatest strengths of the Einherjar is making a mess.' The hotel manager coughed and gave everyone in the room a stern look. 'But today, we must work on the opposite skill: cleaning.' His comment was met with a wave of shocked gasps. 'I know, this will be a very trying activity for a lot of you. But I am certain you all can do it. The valkyrie have put cleaning supplies on every single floor and in every single common area. Now' - he clapped in his hands - 'run and don't come back until every single inch of this place is so clean I can see my reflection in it.'

'How many people do you think will drink bleach so that they die and do not have to engage in cleaning activities any longer?' Mallory asked her floormates. Magnus took a deep breath. He kind of did not want to think about that. Halfborn, on the other hand, grinned. 'Oh, at least a quarter of us will die because of an, airquotes, 'accident.' At least one-third will die because of disagreements and actual accidents and the rest might survive until lunch time.'

T.J. grinned uncomfortably. 'Shall we start before that happens? Maybe there are some favors for the people who actually manage to clean something before the inevitable.'

Alex nodded. 'At least it is something to do. Let's begin in one of the classrooms, those sound like they are not all that difficult to clean up.'

'Everything is fine with me as long as we are not cleaning up showers,' Magnus chimed in.

Mallory put her finger onto his lips. 'Don't. Do not. You shall not give the norns ideas,' she whispered. Magnus gave a little nod. 'Yeah, yeah.'

They acted as calmly as they could while they were walking out of the room. But as soon as they were out, they ran, nay, sprinted towards one of the classrooms before someone else got there first.

They were in luck, this time. After three classrooms that were already taken care of, they found an empty one. The cleaning supplies were already in the middle of the room. With a deep sigh, T.J. picked up a broom. He threw it at Mallory. 'Here you go.'

She almost dropped it back onto the floor, but instead she groaned and began to sweep.

Magnus picked up a bottle of window cleaner. For some reason, it looked like red kool-aid. Maybe it was red kool-aid and that was just what they cleaned the windows with in Hotel Valhalla. Anyway, he sprayed some onto the windows.

He let out a little shreak when the window burst into tiny pieces before his eyes. He ran to the other end of the room. 'What kind of stuff is this?'

Alex looked out the window from a (probably) safe distance. 'They are shooting at us from another window.'

'Get back at them!' Mallory held her broom above her head.

'We have no guns, Mallory.'

Mallory threw the broom down. She ran out of the room before anybody could hold her back.

Magnus threw down the window cleaner. 'At least we won't need this anymore,' he said with a sigh.

As slowly as possible, so that the manager had no excuse to send them to the bathrooms, they cleaned the room. Mallory helped indirectly, by running in with a smoke gun and walking a trial of mud through the room.

'Where does the mud come from?!' T.J. Exclaimed.

'This ain't no ordinary smoke gun,' Mallory answered, before firing out the window at what the others hoped were the people who had fired at them.

When the room was almost ready, they heard someone running towards the room. The hotel manager threw open the door. 'And, how is everything going around here?'

Alex clenched the rag in her hand. 'Good, but we definitely need a lot more...'

'What happened to the window!?'

They all slowly turned towards the window.

'Some jerkheads from another classroom shot it,' Magnus explained.

'Sure. That's is why you have a smoke gun laying around.'

'We needed to get back at them!' Mallory sputtered before thinking about the implications of saying that.

For a few seconds, the manager let her think of what she just said. Mallory swallowed.

'You know, we still need a few people in the public bathrooms,' he began. Magnus looked at the ground.

'How interesting,' Halfborn mused. The manager pointed at the door.

'Go.'

There was no getting out of it. In a row, like they were sent to prison, they walked out of the classroom, towards their doom.

Well, most of them. Halfway through the door, Halfborn made a u-turn and jumped out the window. 'See you at dinnerrrr,' they heard him yell. Magnus looked over his shoulder. Hm. Maybe a lost afternoon was worth it if he had to clean otherwise, but now it was too late.

The manager followed them, to make sure they really went to the bathrooms. When they entered, Magnus had to hold his breath. The stench was absolutely terrible. No wonder - it probably had not been cleaned for years. All the gross things people did in here, including cleaning their pets, ritual sacrifices and making out, left their marks. The lucky thing was that the showers were only very dimly lit, so at least they did not need to see all the dirt.

The manager gave each of them a cleaning rag that was ridiculously small. In the middle of the bathroom already stood a bucket with clean water and soap. 'Good luck.' with a turn of his heels, the manager left the bathroom.

'Alrighty then...' Alex gave the bucket a really light kick. 'If we work quick, we won't miss dinner.'

'That's very hopeful.'

'I never said I was hopeful.'

Magnus sighed, dipped the rag into a bucket and walked towards one of the toilet stalls.

He began to wipe the walls with is. He had no idea what the stuff was that came of the walls, but it was dark, gooey and gross.

His suffering did not last long. He cleaned out the rag and got back to the stall. His only thanks was that the door slammed shut, the words 'use your own bathroom' appeared on the walls and a laser gun shot him down.

Alex looked at the exploding stall. 'I'll save a piece of cherry pie if you don't return in time,' she yelled, knowing Magnus would not hear it. T.J. stopped dead in his tracks.

'Why would we even have a stall that explodes if you want to use it?'

'I don't know,' Alex said with a sigh. 'I swear, one of these showers probably has mud coming out of it. Toxic mud.'

T.J. sniffed. That truly sounded plausible. 'We need to make sure we do not accidently activate the showers,' he proposed.

At that moment, they heard the sound of a shower behind them. Alex and T.J. turned around and saw that Mallory was using the water out of the showers to mop all the dirt on the floor to the middle of the room. It was a good idea, granted that it was clear that at least one of the showers was boobytrapped.

'Mallory! Stop! We don't know what can come out of those showers!' Alex hissed. Mallory shrugged. 'I am willing to take the risk.'

'What if mud comes out? What if that is part of the reason it is so gross everywhere!?'

'If one of these showers had mud coming out of it, don't you think there would be a lot of dirt laying at the bottom?'

'It's darker than space out here,' T.J. muttered. 'We are not able to see it.' Mallory looked at them for a moment, which they could hardly see, before she walked to the next shower. She turned it on and both Alex and T.J. cringed. Luckily, nothing but water came out of the showerhead.

Even though everything seemed to be going fine, Alex and T.J. could not help but make a little jump every single time one of the showers went on. Yet, eventually, Alex began to feel a little uncomfortable.

'Are you two also feeling so... light in your heads?' she inquired. T.J. and Mallory looked over at Alex, who was leaning on her broom.

'I mean... not really,' Mallory answered. Alex coughed.

'Al, I think the chemicals are getting to you,' T.J. threw the broom onto the floor. When he walked over to Alex, his feet made a gross, sticky sound, which did not make her feel any better.

'Chemicals? I don't know if there are many chemicals here, I thought it was all eh... natural mud...'

'You never know what these people did, maybe they had whole chemistry classes in the showers!'

Alex shrugged. Could be. She started to see little black spots flying around, and that was not because of the dark room. 'I think... I need... To sit down... for some time.' She looked at the floor below her. Through the darkness, she could see the mud. No. Never. She'd rather die.

Which is what she did. A few minutes after she began to feel unwell, she fell to the ground and disappeared. Now someone probably had to retrieve a slice of cherry pie for her.

Mallory sighed deeply. 'Well, nothing to be done about it.' She looked up at the ceiling. 'Hey, aren't there showers up there as well?'

'Mallory, I don't think...'

But Mallory did not listen. Mallory was already running towards the button on the wall, which just asked to be pushed. Without really thinking it through, she punched the button, which set off all of the showers at once.

It was bad enough that they got soaking wet. What made it worse is that after a few seconds, toxic mud began to ooze out of the showers. T.J. did not complain. He did not scream either. All he did was accept his fate as both he and Mallory died because of toxicity.

The manager took a good look around. This was officially going on the list of things they would never do ever again. The hotel was grosser, more broken en worse off than ever before. He sighed deeply, very deeply. Maybe they just needed to spend some extra money on a good clean up crew.