The pain… the pain wouldn’t stop!

Compared to other kids her age, Hatkid did pride herself in being able to control her emotions, she didn’t care about anything, she was ruthless, she couldn’t be stopped, she was a wild kid and that made her proud.

But now, for the 7th day in a row, she just couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t do anything or think about anything, the pain in her arm was just infuriating, and it just made her angrier and angrier!

The days at the spaceship just became more hectic in the spaceship, and it all was because of one person… one cat… one cat person…. Well, it was all Cooking Cat’s fault.

At first, Snatcher had tried to make a contract and take over her soul to take control of her, but Cooking Cat said that she wouldn’t cook or do anything for the kid if she had to sign a contract, and Snatcher had to accept.

When she was called to start a new season of her Cooking Show, Snatcher told her she couldn’t go away from the ship so she could keep making meals for Hatkid and take care of her, Cooking Cat decided it was time for another approach.

“What? Do you want to record your stupid show here?”

“That is so, Mr. Snatcher Ghost. The Studio is asking me to start a new season soon or they will cancel. So I am going to move the show here so I can record in the meantime I take care of the alien kid.”

“What are you even going to record here? There is just a bunch of alien food!”

“That is correct, so we are going to make the Season Premiere a special about alien food!”

“What? No! That sounds like a horrible idea! And I told you that if you need money, I can give you some of the one I found in the basement. There is a lot of it lying around.”

“That is Nyakuza’s money. You would not be able to use it in other places unless you go to the Nyakuza metro and exchange it for other currency yourself and accept their horrible, horrible conversion rates! You would have to be naive or have deep connections with the Nyakuza to accept such money at all .”

“Well, maybe perhaps I could…” Snatcher stopped for a moment, he couldn’t actually go there and ask those cats to exchange their money, right? Not after everything that had happened in the forest some weeks ago. “Okay whatever do what you want, just make sure that kid gets her three meals a day, or we are going to have problems!”

“Right, Mr. Snatcher Ghost.”

Snatcher left for the kid’s bedroom to check on her and read a book and Cooking Cat started doing some calls to prepare the recording of her next show.

She wouldn’t let a scary ghost like Snatcher stop her, no no no! The times where she would have to work day and night for a few scraps of food were over. She went back and remembered the time she had been hired to work in the casino by the Mafia.

***

That day she had been so excited, she had finally been hired as a cook! She would finally work as a cook and be known for her delicious meals! Maybe she had to leave home and work on her own, but it would all be worth it.

She arrived at the casino. Well, it was a small place but no matter, it was good for a beginning.

She walked towards the kitchen, she could finally see all the ingredients and tools she would use, she was so close and ready now to cook! When a Mafia Goon stopped in front of her.

“Small Cat is not allowed to enter Mafia’s Kitchen!”

“What?”

“Cat should be working to get rid of mice!”

“But…”

“Now shoo! Shoo! Mafia is working doing dish!”

And she then was kicked out. She had to start working in kicking the rats out so she just could get paid, but it made her depressed, she hadn’t left her home city to work getting rid of rats! She had studied all her life to become a cook!

“Bleh!” She heard a Mafia Man choking on his food. Cooking Cat turned around and watched from above where she was.

“What is happening?” A Mafia Man asked.

“Mafia is choking on food! Food was too terrible for Mafia to try and eat it!” Another goon at his side asked.

“Oh no! What do we do?”

The Mafia Man choking finally ended up struggling and died right on the table.

“Oh…”

“Mafia has to go back to kitchen! Mafia will keep trying to cook until something good comes out!”

Both Men walked towards the kitchen and left the place. Cooking Cat sighed. The Mafia Men clearly didn’t know how to cook, but if they kept going, they would probably get the gist of it eventually, it was just a matter of waiting.

But then Cooking Cat waited, days passed one after the other, and the Mafia didn’t get any better at cooking in the slightest. Customers came looking for exotic food, and left dead carried by ambulances, it was the same thing every single time.

They came in, and left dead, and the process repeated over and over and over.

In her small place above the room of the Casino, she had a small stove, a fridge and some supplies, she used them so she could make some meals herself. When a plan came to her mind.

She saw one of the customers ready to receive the food of the Mafia. It seemed to be some sort of pasta dish. The noodles were all dry, the meatballs were all soggy, the ketchup was watery, and it didn’t smell very good.

She looked back at her own plate. She had been cooking some hot pasta herself, it was tossed with a creamy sauce of raw beaten eggs, accentuated with crisp bits of guanciale, and finished with a shower of grated aged cheese plus freshly ground black pepper.

No, it was too risky, she couldn’t just simply go and swap the Mafia’s food for her own!

“I don’t have to do it.” She said to herself.

“Oh! Thank you!” The man at the table said when he saw his food arrive.

“I don’t have to!” Cooking Cat started sweating.

“Oh well, this looks really exotic!” The man said, looking at the weird fumes coming from his plate. “Like they say, bon appetit!”

“I WON’T DO IT!” The voice in her head kept repeating herself over and over. There was nothing else she could do now anyway, the customer would eat the food, and he would die right there on the table. Unless…

She jumped as fast as she could and approached the table of the tourist sitting by, he had a camera on his hands and was looking around to take pictures.

“Hey, what’s that?” Cooking Cat pointed at the other side of the casino.

“Oh my god! A talking cat!” The tourist just kept staring at Cooking Cat, surprised. Cooking Cat held the plate behind her back, frozen, unable to know what to do next.

“That’s not nice to say, Steve.” The girl that was accompanying him said.

“I mean, just look at him! He’s a real talking cat!” Steve finally turned around to talk with the woman at his side.

“Even then, you shouldn't go all there and just point things out about people! It is rude!”

“You always do this! You keep criticizing me about everything! You even think going to the moon is a bad idea!”

“It is!”

“No it’s not!”

The couple kept arguing back and forth between them, which gave Cooking Cat the chance to swap out the plate with the one she had in her hand and had been carrying over with the most perfect equilibrium until there.

“So… as I was saying, what is all this meow business you guys always talk about?” Steve turned back again to face Cooking Cat, but she was already gone.

“Uh? Where did the funny cat go?” He looked around, but he didn’t see her anywhere.

“Oh well, so, let’s eat!” Steve finally started engulfing his pasta. “Oh wow! This is… this is delicious!”

Steve kept eating happily to the confusion of the Mafia Men, who had already gotten used to seeing the customers drop dead after touching their food.

“Did Mafia do it?”

Cooking Cat smiled from her hiding spot, she had made it, she had not only saved the tourist’s life, but someone else had liked her food!

Things kept escalating over the course of the next few days, the Mafia would keep making their horribly prepared food, and Cooking Cat would keep swapping the plates for something she prepared herself.

Nobody had noticed through all those months, until one day two film directors arrived to visit the place out of interest in the food.

“What will two funny birds order?” A Mafia Waiter arrived at their table,

“Oh Darling! Darling! Darling! What a wonderful place you have here! The Conductor and I came here since we heard the food from the Mafia was the best food there is! I think I will have the ultra special sleepy raccoon dish! Actually, make that two, what do you think Conductor darling? Wanna try this dish with me?”

“Aye.”

“Great!” Make those two crusty toasty hyper cooked in coal sleepy raccoon dishes!”

“Uh…” The Mafia Man looked confused back at them.

“Is there a problem?”

“Oh, well….” The Goon felt conflicted, a lot of thoughts were passing through his head while looking at the directors.

“A penguin, and a scary bird… eating a raccoon? They are eating raccoons! Birds eating racoons!”

“Mhhm?” DJ Grooves asked him.

“Uh, it’s nothing, Mafia will bring your plates soon.” The man turned around and left towards the kitchen.

Some time later, DJ Grooves and The Conductor started talking while they waited for their food.

“Say, darling, since the studio asked us to make ideas for a new show for TV, I was wondering if you have any ideas yourself.”

When Cooking Cat was about to jump down with her replacement plate, she stumbled with a bucket filled with shrimps she hadn’t noticed was at her side and fell off right in the director’s table. Breaking it apart. All the food fell on her face.

“Aww!” She groaned from the pain of the fall.

"Whit aboot a show of a Cookin’ Cat?" The Conductor asked after looking at her.

“Brilliant, darling!”

***

That's how Cooking Cat had gotten her cooking show. The directors had expected her to mess up in the kitchen and cause all sorts of cooking related shenanigans, but she surprised them and her audience with her wonderful dishes. She took her show back to Mafia Town to show the Goons who had hired her just to get rid of rats who she was now, and she even started to cook and test foods everywhere in the world, finally becoming famous.

Her work had paid off, she had been able to make it up not just as a cook, but also as a star, and she was happy. But now that she was being held against her will by Snatcher with the threat of taking her soul if she didn’t comply, she had to decide and do something, or they would cancel her show for good!

No money, no fame, and even worse, no cooking!

Having so many people in her ship made Hatkid anxious, having now not only the scientist, Cooking Cat and Snatcher in her spaceship, but also Cooking Cat’s camera crew, costume designer, make-up artists, set designer, producers, and a parrot foley artist that only communicated making weird noises with his mouth.

The spaceship, which had been converted into a set the last week, was now always noisy. Hatkid couldn’t even sleep, and the throbbing worry of someone opening the vault to get the timepieces of their own just increased more and more for her.

She was now trying to text to distract herself with her only healthy arm to Mu, who seemed to be now in a different dimension as she was.

“Hey, how do you even have a signal there?”

“I have no idea! This place is nuts! Everything is upside down, and there are a bunch of crocodiles and alligators!”

“What are you doing there anyway? ”

The pain in her arm was still bothering her, but she tried to ignore it.

“The idiot of Moonjumper took me here. He said he and his friend got a good offer for a timeshare or something like that, and the whole place is a dump!”

“Lolol”

“LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!” Someone kept screaming from the Main Room of the spaceship, but she tried to ignore that as well.

“So, yeah, there is that, but at least it seems I’m recovering quickly.”

“I think Moonjumper is too scary at times, I don’t like how he is always smiling at people! It's spooky!”

“NO YOU IDIOTS! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FOCUS ON THE ALIEN DISH FIRST! THEN CUT TO ME SO I CAN MAKE THE SURPRISED REACTION!” Cooking Cat yelled from the other room, as a director, she was scary.

“Oh, and Snatcher isn’t scary?”

“Snatcher can be scary, but he is more annoying than anything else, still, he is my BFF! So we are all good!”

“Right.”

“Guys, you have to come and see this stuff! There are just so many paintings! And they are so wacky!” A CAW agent who was working as a stunt double for Cooking Cat had entered the gallery beforehand and had entered the main room where everyone was filming. Great, now they were making fun of her work. “Oh wait, you guys are recording?”

“AGH! Cut! Get away from the shot you pile of useless feathers!”

“Oh, sorry… Hey, did I ever tell you guys about the time I got too much sauce on the pizza?”

“You always tell that story!” The science owl answered, who was chilling out with the TV staff .

“Stop fooling around now! We need to record this show now!” Cooking Cat kept blabbering about the recording, but Hatklid tried to ignore them again and continued to focus on her chat with Mu.

The pain in her arm seemed to get worse with every scream from the staff, it felt dull,

“You should totally leave that place as soon as you can! In fact, don’t even tell Moonjumper either! That guy is up to no good!”

“Sure, and go where?”

“I don’t know! Go wherever! Come with me and we can explore the world!”

“Sure! As if it wasn’t because of the fact that I can’t go anywhere else because everyone in the entire world hates me!”

“These space travelers are so funny I tell you! Look at all this goofy stuff, just really nutty wacky stuff I tell you. Hey, did I ever tell you about the story when we had to take blueprints from the owls?“

“Here he comes with that story again oh my god.” An owl who was working on the staff facepalmed. Hatkid couldn’t see them, but he could hear the palm of the owl hitting hard in his forehead as he did.

“Ha! That is all your own fault! You shouldn’t have gone that crazy that other time!”

“I was trying to save the world! I was making justice! What part of that don’t you understand?”

“Hey look at all these silly hats! Who keeps so many hats in their closet anyway? That is just silly!” She heard Snatcher talking to the crew. Cool, now they were making fun of their hats.

The pain in her arm was only getting worse, now it couldn't even let her think.

“Maybe it’s to hide her terrible haircut!” A CAW agent replied.

“HAHAHA!” Both Snatcher and the agent laughed together.

“Well that’s just dumb lol! You are dumb!” Hatkid only felt angrier and angrier.

“You are the dumb one! And you smell!”

“And look at this silly vault! Who would in the right mind think it would be enough to keep all those timepieces secure in there?”

“Ha! Try to open it! Try to open it!” Cooking Cat challenged the CAW agent while recording.

Oh no, not the timepieces. Hatkid tried to stand up slowly and walk towards the main room.

“I don’t smell! You smell because you… you…. Because you don’t even house and you don’t shower! Lol! You don’t even have a house!”

“What? Are you really making fun of me for that!?”

“And you are really dumb too for trying to fix the world like a crazy maniac! That’s why you are all alone and angry! Ha ha ha ha!”

“Okay, that does it. I’m never going to talk to you again!”

*Your contact has blocked you.*

What? She blocked her? Wasn’t she right though? Hadn’t Mu gone crazy that other day? She even slapped her! And she had no home!

“And did you guys know she doesn’t know how to sing? That’s right! Let me find the page…”

She saw Snatcher holding her diary in the middle of the room, everyone in the room turned around to look at her. There were two CAW agents in front of the vault with lockpicks on the floor.

“Oh, Hatkid, you are awake!” Snatcher turned around to the hallway and saw her staring at him, angrier that he had ever seen him before. “Well… this is awkward.”

“HISS!” Hatkid took out her claws and started scratching everything around her, including Snatcher, the owls, the CAW agents, Cooking Cat and the rest of the staff.

“AAAAAH!” Some owls ran towards the lab trying to escape the rage of Hatkid, but were caught by the ball of fur and feathers from the people the girl had already caught.

“Woah kid! You better stop or you are going to break the eternity of your whole–AAAAH!” Snatcher got caught inside her forcefield and entered the ball Hatkid was making as she kept hissing.

She destroyed the camera equipment, destroyed the lights, destroyed the mics, destroyed the chairs, tables and everything that was inside her ship related to the Cooking Cat show.

“Wait! Miss Hatkid, I can explai–KYAAAAA!” Cooking Cat tried to stop her but she ended up getting caught as well before she could even hiss her back.

Hatkid moved the ball with all her force and squeezed it out of the window of her ship, then threw it with all her strength right towards the earth.

“AAAAHHHH!”

She then walked slowly towards her bedroom as she started to cry, before she could reach the bed, though, she fell back down and lost consciousness on the floor of the hallway.