A selection of the city's villains (Part 2)

At this point I feel like I've told her enough about Chirp, she seems satisfied to say the least. After a few seconds of organizing my thoughts, I continued with the next villain the city has to offer:

Hugo the Cat.

Now this devious fellow is annoying to deal with. Not particularly difficult to fight, as he is quite straight forward. Not too hard to outsmart either due to his more simple-minded nature. But hot damn, you have to choose your battles carefully. The reason is simple actually: He's just that good looking. Lustrous fur of dark orange colour, satisfying the eyes with its pleasant appearance. Big green eyes that induce sympathy. He's slightly overweight though.

All this means that if you fight against him anywhere, as long as there are people present, they are on his side. No matter the objective of the fight, no matter whom he just scammed in broad daylight. It's unfair really. I get angry when thinking about it...

But that's not all the info I managed to acquire. Hugo likes canned tuna. Really, really likes canned tuna. He manages to devour an adult serving of it within 12 seconds (trust me, I was watching, it's unreal). Now you might wonder how he is able to finance this 'not so cheap' lifestyle. He doesn't. He just looks at unsuspecting people and they feel compelled to give him their belongings. He walks down the road and gets showered with gifts. Pretty weird stuff too: I've seen him get a coat hanger once, someone "donated" a shirt with an elephant printed and he received a flashlight... twice. Batteries included. Mostly gets food though. Hence the slight overweight.

Now in terms of combat skills, he's nothing special. He has some general meowing and shouting skills that every cat possesses, but he manages to fuse the "pity me!" and the threatening "give me your belongings" into one "meow". Main fighting strength is charisma, or the fact that every single passerby joins the fight on his side. If there's nobody around, he usually carries a huge club (it's as big as he is, kinda huge) and fights with some below-average bonking skills.

Why would I consider him a villain you might ask? Leaving the shameless extorting of food from strangers aside, he has some fairly cruel tendencies. Rumour has it that Hugo possesses some dark cellar somewhere. He apparently finds joy in torturing mice (while I'd consider that unnatural, he's a cat after all so it's part of his nature?), and his methods are especially cruel. Prime example is the most prolific of his victims, the only one that has escaped his grasp, his nemesis:

Scrat the Rat.

Interrupting my storytelling, I shot the nightingale a knowing look. If anyone could possibly obtain (and successively sell) information about the location of my spare key, it would be this guy. She twitched. It's all but confirmed. I figured I'd beat him up extra hard the next time I see him.

Scrat is one of the lesser known evils in this city. He's the new kid on the block, but that doesn't make his misdeeds any less grievous. His motivation? Revenge. His restraint? Nonexistant. Collateral damage? Omnipresent. The reason? Hugo the Cat.

It seems like revenge is the sole purpose of existence for this devilish rat. How deeply etched the notion of getting back at 'the Cat' is, is fairly obvious. First of all, his war paint. One red and one white stripe below his eyes. Now I don't exactly know what happened back then, but I've been told that it's supposed to resemble ketchup and mayonnaise. Scrat fully embraces it though, wearing it like a scar reminding him of the adversary he so desperately fights to eliminate. He even uses it as his signature when smearing his terrorist threats on walls (he doesn't care if the walls are freshly painted or not, what a psychopath), the threats usually consisting of civilians getting poisoned.

He's up for negotiations though, always stating that he won't act if Hugo performs some embarrassing act. That's also his main fighting style. Lure his targets out with threats and then ambush them somewhere along the way. Nimble charge attacks with poison coated teeth, stealth shots with his poison catapult, poisoned traps etc. (there's a theme here). Thankfully for all the important people (Hey, that's me!), I am very good at dealing with poison. In addition to the fact that he can't even properly apply his poison when fighting me due to my shell and sturdy skin. This makes fighting him rather easy, while also causing him to avoid angering me (he miserably failed by selling my info).

The other notable thing about this obsessed maniac is his prowess in thievery. I admit he's better at sneaking than I am, however that's solely due to the fact that he's a rat. Rats are naturally dark and sneaky, small enough to fit through holes I can't even see and gifted with a keen sense for the right opportunities. If he didn't have all those boons, then I'd be the best infiltrator in town for sure. No, I'm not upset. It's just that he's cheating, but that's enough on this topic.

Coupled with his rat-bonus-aided sneaking, his stealing skills naturally exceed his peers, skills that he mostly uses for his own gains. Mainly for "acquiring" the newest Hugo related fan articles sold at literally every shop. Seeing that this is all I'm willing to tell the nightingale, she then immediately communicated that she wanted info on the next one by carefully nudging me with her beak. A crazed look in her eyes further displayed the urgency of this matter. In addition to impatience. A good chunk of impatience.