He reached out then with his Dungeon Sense and felt all Max’s. Felt the tunnel and then the floor. The rat’s nest was somehow other and the rats were as well, but the entire building was now his. He could actually see his rat crouched in the corner. His sense included the Indian on the porch, the porch itself, the teepee on the roof, the roof, but once again, beyond those boundaries, nothing. Except for the area where his hawk could view, he could tell nothing about his surroundings. It was a little like those cartoons he remembered from his childhood. Someone would be in the dark and shining a flashlight. The only part of the cave the hunter would see was the part in the flashlight beam. His hawk and rat were his flashlights in the darkness that surrounded him. They were fine, but he wanted the sun.

The first thing he had to do was to get rid of the rats and their nest. He tried to clean Max’s using his Dungeon Clean ability, but nothing happened. He figured that he needed to clean out the rats first, so he sent in the snakes.

All three snakes headed toward the surface. One stayed in the tunnel, the other two moved toward the sides of the rat’s nest. The snakes were shaking their tails, the rattle was loud, louder than he thought it should be. The rats didn’t like it. They began hissing and then they all left their nest at once heading towards the snake on the northside of the building.

Despite the humans and Baxter having killed some of the rats, there were still plenty of them left. About fourteen rats charged the snake. They were all adults. All looking like an ordinary street rat, brown fur, big yellow teeth, long whiskers. Except that each one was about the size of a golden retriever. Their pink paws had inch long claws that a brown mud-like substance covered. It wasn’t mud.

The snake that all the rats were charging struck twice and that quick, that there were two rats down. The other rats though began to clamber on the snake trying to attack its eyes. The snake rose in the air from its coiled position and the rats on its head and neck fell to the ground, landing with thumps like water balloons hitting the pavement. But that didn’t stop them and they began latching on to the snake’s body and chewing on its scales and skin trying to breakthrough.

The other two snakes entered the battle from the rear and the other side. The one in the tunnel latched onto a rat, burying its fangs into the body, it pulled the rat back and coiled on top of it, the rat’s hissing noise vanishing soon after in the crack of bone splintering from the weight of the snake. Rattlesnakes may not constrict, but they aren’t against using their weight.

The other snake came around the front of the nest, sliding with its mouth open, fangs extended. It raised its body, gathered its tail and body into a coil and then thrust out, nailing one of the unwary rats on either side of its backbone. The rat shrieked, extending its neck and head out in a final cry and then died.

The rats were still fighting though. Hissing and squeaking they all remained on the first snake they had attacked. Blood was beginning to flow from its wounds. Its skin was tough, but so were the inch-long claws and the four-inch incisors of the rats. They were in a rage, their jaws moving, each second another bite, meat and blood flying out from each mouthful they tore from the snake's body.

The snake fought back. It coiled and uncoiled trying to force the rats to a new location, trying to keep them from chewing into its body. It struck another rat, its fangs penetrating the chest and plump belly. Rat still in its mouth, it smashed its head against the floor, shaking and stunning the rat, the poison killing it soon after.

The other two snakes struck again. Their venom finishing off the rats they struck almost as soon they injected it.

Jake tried to heal the snake that the rats were attacking, but wasn’t able to do so. Only after did he remember that the snake must be ‘out of combat’ to heal. What defines out of combat? Can the snake be in the same room? Or does everything that was attacking it need to be dead?

In the meantime, he tried to tell the first snake to flee back to the tunnel and the snake in the tunnel to move into the room. Both attempted to do so. The first snake began backing away from the rats, his coils scissoring over each other, knocking off the chewing rats. The snake from the tunnel pulled out of the tunnel, coiling and advancing, struck again and hit a rat.

The former tunnel snake pulled back its current victim and once again coiled over the poison-stunned rat, holding it down. The same sound of crunching bones rang out. The other snake, the one that rats were attacking dove into the tunnel, scraping off rats against the tunnel’s sides. The rats backed and turned to face into the room.

With the first snake in the tunnel and no rats attacking it, that must have counted as out of combat because Jake was able to use his Heal Monster ability. He did it again twice more, the huge gaping rents in the snake’s skin healed miraculously. The snake hit the first-floor tunnel, doubled back and went rushing back up the tunnel toward the main room.

In the meantime, the rats attacked again. Despite having lost their original target, they hissed like giant steam irons and charged back into the room. There were only six rats remaining. Two of them were closer to the former tunnel snake so they jumped side-by-side onto its neck, trying to carve their way inside with their teeth and claws, the other four attacked as a pack on the other snake.

The snake with the four rats focused on it, rose up off the ground, then shot its body forward, slamming his fangs deep into the belly of a screaming rat in mid-leap, trying to avoid its strike. The snake’s fangs shot into the rat, the final inch or so visible at the rat’s back before the snake twisted and curled his body back into a coil, in the process, flinging the now dying rat toward the corner of the room.

The other three rats all made a dash for the snake, attacking a different area. They opened up the snake and it began to bleed, but between the snake’s coiling and striking, the wounds weren’t serious.

Somehow, the two rats on the former tunnel snake began tearing at the same spot on the snake. Blood began flowing, in seconds they had carved and bitten a basketball-sized hole in the side of the snake's neck.

The snake went crazy, trying to dislodge them, coiling and slamming its body on the floor, trying to strike one of the rats. Finally, during one of its rolls, it succeeded in knocking a rat off. The dazed rat took a moment to shake itself, trying to regain its fighting strength, but the snake struck, its fangs digging deep into the side of the rat. The rat let out a strangled ‘meep’ noise and then started staggering towards the snake again. The snake struck it again, this time flinging the dead rat into the wall of the room.

The final rat on the original tunnel snake kept digging at the hole the two rats had dug. It was in the neck of the snake. The rat had reached the trachea and was tearing into the c-shaped cartilage. Jake could hear the breath of the snake whistling out between the tearing claws, Once through, the two major veins of the snake would be accessible. The snake was still writhing trying to get the rat loose where it could strike it, but the rat buried itself in the hole it had carved, claws firmly latched in the skin of the snake, entire head and neck red and bloody, its mouth opening and closing, tearing out flesh and cartilage. The snake could not shake it loose.

Then the third snake emerged from the tunnel moving like an express train and without slowing down hit the rat buried in the other snake’s neck. The hit hammered both the snake and the rat. The rat taking both the blow and the poison died almost immediately. The snake whipped away and went rolling across Max's floor. Jake told it to head for the tunnel to heal and it did, coiling and hissing.

The three rats remaining on the former tunnel snake kept fighting, trying to chew through the snake's skin. But this snake didn't have two rats latched to the same spot and was able to keep moving and coiling. The rats were not attached on its neck either, but were down on its body where the snake could target them. It struck the rat on its tail, again pretty much killing it instantly, it’s giant mouth almost circling the rat’s head and shoulders. At the same time, the snake who’d killed the rat eating the other snake's neck struck and killed the rat on the snake’s belly. The rat popped like a balloon, caught between the pistoning head of the attacking snake and the wall of the other snake's belly. The rat’s intestines spread over the floor and snakes like a bowl of dropped spaghetti.

The final rat remaining, squeaked and ran, not back towards the nest, but outside through the closest exit, the window. It reached the window and exited moments before the snake struck at it and missed. It kept running, vanishing into the woods that had grown around Max’s.

The battle was over. Jake healed his snakes. Then he tried to use his Dungeon Clean ability on the rat’s nest again. And once again, it didn’t work. His snakes stayed interested in the nest, nosing around the edges. Their long diamond-patterned bodies circling and gliding around it. He could see their nostrils flaring, their tongues coming out and tasting the air. Finally, they all found different holes leading in and flowed inside the nest. There was a brief squeaking noise from within and then the snakes came out and Jake could clean away the nest.

“Pinky snacks! They like their pinky snacks,” Jake said. He honestly didn’t think that the old Jake, the human, would have cared any more than the new Jake did. He remembered hating rats and you can’t hate only the adults of a species. ‘Just because something is cute, doesn’t make it entitled to live,’ he thought. He wondered about the Bobs then. ‘Was mankind cute and it didn’t matter? Or just not cute enough.’