SWAT KATS: TRANSITIONS

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

THREE: THE FAMILY YOU KEEP

For All the Fanfic Authors: Doing what the Tremblays Won't.

(Credit for Alderson Stern Jr. goes to Kooshmeister, who allowed me to use him)

Megakat Harbor

The Luxury Yacht Bastet

Four Months after "Transitions"

Saturday Evening

The Enforcers Ball was an annual event which had grown in importance over the last few years. A tradition hailing back to the time of the Great Recession, it provided a means by which the wealthy and elite could rub elbows with cinema stars and starlets, get loaded on top shelf alcohol, caviar, and foie gras, and then claim that they were 'giving to a charitable cause.' And to some degree, this was a fair assessment; the Enforcers Ball did help the organization it was named after. The Survivor's Fund received fully 90 percent of its funding from ticket sales to the Ball, as well as the event's take of the Silent Auction proceeds. That money went to supporting the rehabilitation of wounded officers, and pension payments to the families of those who didn't come after the mission.

Most of the money the event generated, however, went into maintaining its lavish appearance and content. Take this year, for example; on top of the entertainment, the consumables, and the security costs, there had been a fit thrown by several of the 'Old Money' families who claimed that the venue City Hall had selected wasn't posh enough. It had taken several phone calls on the part of Mayor Manx to arrange a substitute, which is how the Enforcers Ball found itself floating on the newly launched super yacht of one Charles Vanderclaw the 6th, heir to the family who had built their wealth off of first railroads, and then the steel manufacturing empire used to expand it. The cost had, of course, been a favor for a favor; the latest land grab on the part of Vanderclaw Steel had gone through committee without so much as a whisper of dissent, thanks to the mayor rubbing the right elbows.

The price of politics, Deputy Mayor Calico Briggs thought to herself as she nursed her champagne flute. That was one part of the job she absolutely detested. Another was coming to events like this. Sure, a part of her loved getting dolled up and looking fantastic, but she hated how a lot of the toms in the upper crust undressed her with their eyes, especially after a few drinks. Like Bruce Mayne. She and Felina had had a good laugh not long after making their peace with Chance and Jake; how anybody could have thought that idiot could be a SWAT Kat was not a high mark in favor of the collective intelligence of Megakat City. She loved this dress, a strapless gown, red dark enough to almost count as maroon in the right light, and a slit up to the knee on one side in case she had to suddenly break out in a run. She hated the stares it garnered, though. She only wanted one guy looking at her like that, and he was unfortunately, a proverbial million miles away from all of this.

Someone bumped into her from the side, jarring her hard enough to cause her to spill her drink. "Oh, apologies." A guy, then. Of course. Callie looked away from her now mostly empty glass and the puddle in the teak decking to the kat responsible. Megakat District Representative Bill Lyons. Late thirties, charcoal gray fur with black stripes. Handsome, but definitely self-assured. Recently had gained more prominence by working with a group of City Aldermen and katizens to get the 'Neighborhood Defense Corps' initiative pushed through. She had met him only briefly a few times before, as the bulk of his affairs was handled by the mayor directly. He smoothed out his own tuxedo before he so much as offered a hand to help her, but his attitude changed when he saw her. "Oh, dear. Let me get you another drink."

"That's all right, I wasn't going to get another."

"You certain?" Representative Lyons pressed. Callie smirked a little, notching up her assessment of him one degree from its low score. At least he hadn't insisted.

"Oh, I'm sure."

"Well, I think I need another." He waved over a passing waiter and took another flute from the fellow's tray, and Callie put her empty one in its place. Once the waiter wandered back off, the tom took a sip and nodded appreciatively. "Again, allow me to apologize. I didn't spill any on you, I hope?"

"No, I got clear of the splash zone."

"Marvelous. Would have been mortifying, if I had." The tom smiled a bit. "I must say, though, I'm glad I bumped into you. This was turning into a very tedious affair before I stumbled into you."

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you planned it." She countered dryly.

"A confirmed bachelor out on the prowl, bumps into a very attractive shekat with no romantic affiliations? I can understand your paranoia." Mr. Lyons cleared his throat and glanced around the room. "Although I'm certain that there will be photos of us published in the society column tomorrow."

"Perhaps I should leave then, just so nobody gets the wrong idea." Callie stated, glad for an excuse to end the conversation. His hand came over and gently laid on her forearm, just forcefully enough to deny an easy escape. She could break free, but not without making a scene, and she turned to him, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

"So, there is someone in your life." He mused softly. Her eyes narrowed unconsciously, and he smiled, releasing her arm. He finished off his drink and handed the empty flute to yet another omnipresent waiter. "Relax. Actually, I think we could help each other. Care to dance?"

The swing band in their white tuxedos started up into a new song, brassier and more up tempo than the last number. Callie took a step back away from him, still uneasy. He rolled his eyes. "What would earn me at least three minutes?"

Callie looked at him for a little longer, weighing the offer. He wanted something. And he was observant. Too observant. That danger sense of hers, sharpened by far too many near-death situations and years of working as Manx's subordinate, was pinging off the charts.

"Not tonight." She turned him down, and then cut her way through the crowd in the opposite direction he would have preferred; towards the open night air, and away from the dance floor.

Away from the yacht's spacious interior, Calico found a spot of railing at the bow of the vessel. Ignoring the few inebriated, giggling partygoers that were also outside and away from the music, she exhaled irritably and removed her glasses, cleaning a bit of moisture off of them. She heard footsteps coming up behind her and quickly jammed her glasses back on, whirling around into a basic defensive posture that Jake and Chance had insisted on teaching her, and which Felina had drilled her on just the day before. Her eyes glowered through the lenses as Mr. Lyons stopped and reflexively backpedaled a few paces, his palms up and out away from him.

"You have a problem comprehending no, don't you?" Callie snapped at him.

The Representative's sense of fear subsided a touch. "I didn't come out here to make trouble. Just to apologize."

"You did that already."

"Not for the drink. For asking you to dance. I saw an opportunity for distraction. If your relationship with your girlfriend is serious enough she's teaching you how to defend yourself, however, perhaps I should have just made a pass at a film starlet instead."

Callie stopped and blinked as her mind clunked, tried to shift gears, and lost its grip. "What?"

Lyons gave his head a shake and moved to the railing, staying out of arm's reach of her. "Your girlfriend, Lieutenant Feral. It's all right, I quite approve. I too, can't exactly take my beau out in public." He shrugged nonchalantly. "It helps if I have an active 'dating life' in the public eye. Keeps kats, including the others in government, from looking too closely. I had intended you to be my beard for the evening. I had thought you'd be sympathetic, given that you…"

"She's not my…" Callie fumbled, cutting him off and wincing. "I mean, I'm not…" He looked over his left shoulder to her sympathetically, and Callie exhaled and went quiet.

Is that what kats thought of her? Not that Felina wasn't her best female friend, but really? And then came a pang of guilt mixed with fear.

That somehow, that falsehood, however laughable, was better than the truth of who she was really dating.

Lyons sighed and sidled in a little closer. "I'm sorry. Apparently, assumptions are as much an enemy to me as they are an ally."

"If you're going to try and ask me to keep what you told me under wraps, you can relax. I could care less who you date, as long as it isn't me."

"Wow." He blinked at that. "The stories about you are true. You speak your mind."

"Around guys that act like pigs, it gets easy." She stood straight and stared him down. "Now why don't you tell me what you want."

"Honestly, I just wanted to spend an evening chatting with someone who didn't have an angle." He replied. "And maybe I was off the mark with you, but I thought that maybe the two of us could keep the other social parasites off of one another."

She closed her eyes. It sounded like he was telling the truth, but she'd met way too many leeches who could play charming just long enough to get their claws into a girl. Megakat University had been a terrific stage to learn from the mistakes of others.

Representative Lyons made a small grunt of defeat. "Well. Again, apologies for bumping in to you." He started to walk off when Callie threw him a lifeline.

"What's his name?" She asked, looking over her shoulder towards him. He spun around slowly, blinked once, then smiled and moved back up to the railing of the ship to stand beside her.

"Barry." He said in a soft voice that didn't carry.

"Some ground rules." She said, satisfied with his answer. "We don't talk about our personal lives. If you have something about business or politics, call the office Monday. I do not accept drinks from other kats, and we will not be dancing."

"All that leaves is sitting here and talking about nothing."

"You get it." Callie smirked at him.

Mr. Lyons considered his limited options for a few seconds, placing more of his weight on the yacht's rail.

"Nice weather we're having." He finally ventured, adding enough inflection to make it clear he was joking.

Callie smiled a little and stifled the laugh. She looked up at the starry night sky instead.

"It is at that."

Megakat Shores

SWAT Kats Secondary Hangar Site

Sunday Morning

One very good thing about living and working in a salvage yard was that beyond the endless opportunities to work out and stay in shape, there was plenty of junk on hand for whatever particular project they needed to get around to. Today, the salvage yard had provided the necessary materials to make a very effective set of doors for the 'sunroof' opening that they had excavated out of the bedrock beside the shore. With their talents at repurposing and welding, crafting them had been easy enough.

Mounting them, on the other hand, was a different challenge altogether. Necessity had forced them to do the bulk of the work on the sunroof from the inside out, hiding the excavation within the cavern's interior. Professor Hackle and Jake had designed a 'simple' system to retract the doors along a lubricated guiderail into carefully dug out and reinforced 'trenches' underneath a reconstructed layer of coastal topsoil and grass.

Even making the doors hollow with a honeycomb design for internal support, the sheer size of the two reinforced doors easily made them weigh three to four times what a car might. The weight of the shoreline camouflage patterned astroturf, while less than real soil and grass, didn't help matters either. That, they had been forced to send out for, although they'd handled the paint job themselves.

With Jake Clawson holding down the fort at the salvage yard and Callie buried in paperwork, that left keeping after the work of construction to Chance, Felina, and to their relief, the small robot Cybertron.

"This would be so much easier if we could use the Turbokat's hover mode to lower these things into position." Chance grunted, straining to guide the first of the doors down next to the tracks. Inside of the cavern and suspended on an intricate network of three separate crampon-held lines that allowed him great freedom of movement, Cybertron chirped an affirmative. The robot used one telescoping arm to brace himself against an elevated platform on the cavern's floor while stabilizing the heavy platform into position.

Another cold and heavy gust blew up from the sea, making Felina stumble a little before she caught herself and steadied the first door's guide wire. "This would be easier if the wind wasn't trying to blow us over. It's picking up some."

"We're right on the shoreline. It'd surprise me if it didn't act up at certain times of the day." Chance answered her. She shook it off and slipped back into her own world while he went on. "Crosswinds were a big concern for us out here. The Salvage Yard's weather conditions are more consistent, easier for a short runway landing. Here though, it makes more sense to go for a VTOL landing setup, and use the cave entrance for launches."

"Hm."

"Jake's still trying to talk me into setting up another hydraulic lift like we've got at the main base, but it's not that feasible. We found that lift system as-is. This one, we'd have to do from scratch." Chance paused to give her a chance to respond, but she didn't. "Just as well. I can land the Turbokat even with coastal crosswinds down this shaft. Not sure anyone else could, though." He went on, giving her an easy opening to poke fun at him or to challenge him on, which she again failed to address.

Straining behind the complicated pulley system keeping the platform from dropping suddenly, Chance looked over to her, and took note of her far-off stare. "Uh, flight control to Captain Feral, come in."

Felina blinked a few times and reset her stance to better brace against the slight sway of the door and the winds. "Sorry. The wind's picking up a little, isn't it?"

"You said that already." He pointed out, causing her to flinch. "Felina, you're super distracted. What's wrong? Something going on at work?"

"Just that business about the neighborhood defense corps." She said.

Chance watched her for a little bit. "But that isn't what's eating you."

Felina averted her gaze. "Damnit. Jake's supposed to be the insightful one."

"With you, I shut up and pay attention." Chance explained, uncharacteristically serious for a change. He whistled down into the cavern's rooftop opening while setting several locks and winches into place. The added mechanisms secured the reinforced doorway from dropping any further. "Hey Cybertron! We're taking a quick break. I've got the stops in place, so go recharge your batteries for a bit."

The robot beeped up an affirmative, and the sound of whirring servos faded out as Hackle's lone surviving automaton went to do as he'd been ordered. With the installation now on hold, Chance focused all of his attention back on Felina. "Come on. Talk to me, beautiful."

She seemed to be arguing with herself, but she finally sighed and looked to him with a particularly miserable expression. "My parents have been getting on my case to spend some time with them, but because I've either been working, training with you, dealing with problems or working on this new hangar, I kept spacing them off. So I got a call from them last night. They're coming down from upstate to visit me."

"Okay." Chance nodded. "That has the possibility to maybe be a little awkward, but explain to me why you look like you've just gotten a life sentence."

"I never had to keep secrets from them before." Felina explained slowly. "But now…"

Chance blinked a couple of times, finally catching on to what she was getting at. "It's all right."

"No, it isn't." She insisted. "Because I know that my mom is going to start talking about why I'm not dating anyone."

"Heh. And here I thought you were married to the job." Chance got a punch to the shoulder for the joke, and grunted before rubbing it. "Geez. Is this going to be a thing with you?"

"Only when you say something stupid."

"I'll buy shoulder pads." Chance grumbled. "Felina, it's okay. My feelings aren't hurt. Whatever you decide to do, I'll support."

"That's just it. I want to tell her that I'm dating someone. But I can't. Because once they know, Uncle Ulysses will know, and even though he never drives out to the boneyard to bug you two, I'm damn certain he still remembers your names."

"Maybe not our faces." Chance suggested. "Old Sourpuss has been giving us the stink eye from yards away for a few years now, and the lightbulb's never clicked for him."

She clenched a fist as if to smack him in the shoulder again, but held off. "Don't joke about this. Not now."

Chance sighed and stepped back, tucking his hands into his pockets. "You think that if he knew you were dating me, that he'd somehow be able to connect the dots to who you've been spending your free time with."

"And then arrest you. Or something else just as awful."

"So, don't tell your parents about me."

Felina stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "I'm angry about this."

Chance didn't look away from her. "I know. Because you want to tell them." When she blinked, he rolled his shoulders and looked up at the skies dotted with sparse clouds. "You want to fight this. Your first instinct's the same as mine. You want to punch your way out of this problem. But we can't. I don't play the 'what-if' game nearly as much as Jake does, but I think about you…about us…a lot." Chance gave her a smile he hoped wasn't nearly as depressing as he felt. "Me and Jake, we knew what we'd be giving up when we put on the masks. What kind of a normal life could either of us really have when we're flying patrols and saving the city on a part-time basis? How could we get involved with anyone, knowing that we'd either have to keep hiding the truth from them or having them know that some day later, we might never come back home at all?" The burly tom chuckled a bit. "We don't carry a badge, we don't have the pension, but we still have all the risks."

"Tell me something, Chance. Were you planning on being a SWAT Kat the rest of your life?"

"I guess that depends how long the rest of my life is." The pilot shrugged off the question. "As for your folks, I'll support whatever decision you make."

"Putting it all on my shoulders, you mean."

"Hey, I've never met your folks. Even when Jake and I were in the Enforcers, your uncle didn't talk much about his family."

"You wanna see a picture of 'em?" She asked. Chance thought about it for a heartbeat before he nodded.

"Why not."

As they waited for Cybertron to come back so they could resume the work, Felina pulled out her billfold and removed a small wallet-sized family portrait. With him chuckling at her father's image, she began to tell Chance about a different part of the Feral clan.

West Megakat City

Tuesday Afternoon

The camera was rolling, and Ann Gora, resplendent in her usual blue blazer and pearls, was fully in her element. While now a fully-vetted desk anchor for Kat's Eye News, the itch to get out in the field still raised its head on occasion, and her superiors were more than willing to oblige. This wasn't a live broadcast, the footage was going into the evening reels for an ongoing story, but she still gave it her best. Having the ability to do multiple takes helped, as it was most decidedly busy, with a line of kats jostling to get inside an old brick building that had seen better days.

"This is Ann Gora, standing outside of the newly recommissioned Enforcers precinct facility in west Megakat City. It's opening application day for the kats of this city who are looking to join the ranks of the 'Neighborhood Defense Corps', which we can finally shorten to the NDC as the city council decided on a name. While officially, the program was created solely as a means of community outreach, in speaking with the kats in line here, there is no doubt that the real reason for the NDC's foundation was to give the city's administrators some control over the rising groundswell of public activism, and prevent kats from following in the footsteps of our most famous vigilante crimefighters, the SWAT Kats."

She paused and made a gesture, and Jonny hit stop on his camera so he could chuckle. "Lemme guess. We feed in some of the footage from earlier there, right Annie?"

Ann flashed him a winning smile. "You've got it, Jonny. Back on me in five, four…" She resumed her pose and counted off the last few seconds in her head as Johnny, her most trusted cameraman, swung back into action.

"Kats of every stripe and walk of life have come here, and to the three other former precinct locations in the hopes of being selected for the NDC program. According to news briefs published by the Enforcers and the mayor's office, the candidates selected for the program will receive training that will focus heavily on vigilance and awareness, as well as proper procedures in regards to emergency situations, crime incidents, and the statutes on making a citizen's arrest. Downplayed in their dispatches, however, is the promise of a small amount of military training equivalent to the first few days of what Enforcer candidates go through. What specifics this training includes is something that has been hotly debated, but both Sergeant Messner, the Enforcers press liaison, and Commander Feral himself, have been unwilling to disclose the details. Still, for the residents of Megakat City, trouble comes often enough that any amount of training and preparedness being offered is seen as long overdue. As rigorously as the Enforcers patrol and protect this city, one citizen in line told me, he'd like to be able to protect himself and his family when they aren't around."

She paused again, flicked her ears, and then stuck her tongue out at Jonny, who had raised up his sunglasses to waggle his eyebrows at her suggestively. "It's a good thing you're a wizard at editing, Jonny."

"That's not the only thing you keep me around for, Annie."

"You don't get paid for the other thing."

"I do that for free."

"Oh, please." She rolled her eyes at him. "Save it for tonight." Jonny started to laugh, but he cut himself off sharply, in a way that Ann Gora knew all too well; He'd seen something startling.

She spun around right as a side door that had been opened up with haste and excess force recoiled from the exterior brick wall of the building, and two uniformed Enforcers came out dragging a young tom in torn jeans and a faded yellow shirt behind them. The fellow looked to be struggling against them, yelling something that they couldn't hear from their distance. The scuffle, tucked away in a side alley and behind a chain link fence, went unnoticed by the masses gathered in front of the old precinct building.

"Keep the camera on. But low." Ann said, softer than she expected. Moving at a slow pace so as to not draw more attention than they did already, the pair walked away from the main crowd and towards the fenced in alleyway. On their approach, they watched with a mixture of confusion and concern as the two Enforcers let go of the youthful male, pushing him just hard enough to make him stumble and keep from lunging back at them. By the time Ann and Jonny reached the fence, the Enforcers were already turning for the door. One of them saw their approach and scowled for a moment before seeing that Jonny had his camera down at his side, presumably turned off. He shook his head and followed his partner, closing the door hard behind them.

The tom that they had kicked out of the building knelt on the ground, his head hung low in defeat while his shoulders shook. Ann let him have a few moments before she spoke up.

"Excuse me, sir? Sir, are you all right?"

"No." The tom croaked out, shaking his head. "They wouldn't…wouldn't even give me a chance."

"I saw that." Ann answered him. He finally picked himself up and glanced over at her, blinking in surprise when he recognized her. There weren't any kats in the city who wouldn't recognize Ann Gora in her favorite outfit. "Why?"

"Juvie record. Was supposed to be sealed. But one of 'em, they remembered me." He went on bitterly. "Called me a punk, said I had no business signing up. I tried to tell him, I changed. That I was getting my life together. That I wanted to help." He wiped some dirt and tears away from his face with the back of a sleeve. "But that didn't matter to them. It didn't matter how much I wanted it. How much I needed this. How I could do some good. One mark on me, and suddenly I'm not good enough for them."

His eyes burning, he looked to Ann Gora one last time before shaking his head and turning around, trudging for the other end of the alley. "Screw them. Screw this city."

Ann Gora stayed silent as he walked on, turned the corner, and vanished.

"Tell me you got all that." She finally said.

Jonny grunted, lifting the camera up so he could use the viewer, and checked his footage.

"Oh yeah. We got it. What do you wanna do with it, Annie?"

"What else?" The anchorwoman said coolly. "Tell the truth."

Megakat City Outskirts

Greykat Bus Depot

Wednesday Morning

Megakat City was a sprawling metropolis with ten million kats living in it, and trains, buses, and airplanes ferried countless thousands in and out with little ceremony or notice by most. When another Greykat bus pulled up to the main terminal and the airbrakes hissed after it came to a stop, there was no crowd waiting with banners, no celebratory band. No welcoming committee with a laurel and hearty handshake. It was just another nameless bus depositing a nameless bunch of kats, and they filed off one by one; the college students, the elderly, the chattering immigrants come in search of opportunities. Out of the interior of that transport and into a gloomy and overcast city they stepped out, with a hundred different destinations and dozens of different goals.

In the midst of them all, gone unnoticed and barely recognized save for a slight shift to avoid bumping into her came a shekat in her late teens with faded clothes and a checkered scarf tied around her head. Looking ragged, worn out, and with mussed fur that hadn't seen a shower in a few days, the green-eyed brunette stepped slowly with a backpack slung over one shoulder. She took a heavy duffel bag from the bus driver after he unloaded it from the storage compartment, grunted slightly as she rebalanced herself from the added weight, and trudged towards the terminal's interior. It shouldn't have been that hard to carry two bags. The swell of her stomach, and what she carried inside of it, made everything harder.

Along a wall inside of it was a row of payphones with chained phone books in various states of disrepair. The scowling shekat went to the least damaged phone book and rifled through the four inch thick text for the information she needed.

"Jim Clawson. Joshua Clawson. No Jacob." She muttered, trying not to sound distraught. And she couldn't remember the other name, the fella that was supposed to be his closest friend here. Steeling herself, she inserted a quarter and a dime into the payphone, then dialed the operator.

"Operator. How may I direct your call?"

"I'm looking for a Jacob Clawson." She said. "He used to be an Enforcer. He lives somewhere in Megakat City. His number and address might be unlisted."

"One moment, please. I'll look into that." It was waiting. Nothing but waiting.

Two minutes passed, and then the operator finally came back. "I am sorry. We did have an old listing for a Jacob Clawson at 3324 Bering Street, Apartment 2-A, but that phone number has been disconnected."

She closed her eyes, let her head fall to the side and rest against the paneling separating her phone from the next one over. Her father knew the phone number of where to reach Jacob. Not that he had ever told her, or written it down somewhere she could find.

Heaven forbid that anything should be easy. Only the family motto kept her going. Show nothing. Hide it until you were alone. Putting the brakes on her panic gave her the opportunity to suss out her other problems. If you can't find Jake Clawson in the phone book, or from the operator…

The young and pregnant shekat took a deep breath and looked around herself. A newspaper stand with candies was nearby, with the vendor in charge of it looking bored and scribbling on the games section of one of his papers.

"Excuse me." She said, approaching him. The older kat straightened up a bit at her approach, quickly noticing her condition. "I'm looking for the Enforcers."

"Uh huh. You mean, like their main building?"

"…Yeah. Good a place to start as any." She nodded slowly.

"Okay. Look up, then." The newspaper vendor said, pointing a finger over her right shoulder and down the Megakat City skyline.

Enmeshed among the other skyscrapers, with a clear path from an enormous bridge of some kind jutting out from it, was a stoic looking building with the Enforcers emblem affixed against its apex.

"It's about thirteen blocks from here. Hell of a walk. You gonna be okay?"

"I came this far, didn't I?" She answered, hoisting her duffel bag to a more comfortable spot. She turned around to walk off, but stopped at his voice.

"Hey. Girl." She looked back, surprised to see the old tom holding up a candy bar towards her. "Got a quarter?"

"How much are they?"

"For you? A quarter. You look a little peaked." The saleskat shrugged.

Faint lines crinkled around her eyes as she dug out a silvery coin from her pocket and traded him for the snack. "Thanks." He smirked a little and waved her off, returning to his crossword.

She munched on the chocolate as she went, grateful for something to quell the growling in her stomach while she trudged the long walk to Enforcers Headquarters.

Let's hope that someone there still knows how to find you, Uncle Jake.

Pumadyne Industries, Corporate Headquarters

Downtown Megakat City

One would take a look at all of Pumadyne Industries' various holdings and think that the multinational weapons and manufacturing conglomerate would be commanded by a kat of domineering force of will and charisma. In truth, Pumadyne's CEO was an unassuming kat by the name of Alderson Stern Jr, a thin-framed tom who had only just begun to develop a paunch in his later middle-aged years. The portrait of him framed at the building's front entrance had CEO Stern standing on the runway of the Enforcers Headquarters, the Megakat City flag waving at full mast, and a full squadron of Pumadyne-built Enforcers jets flying in the skies behind him with their jetwash contrails a blazing white. The paunch was noticeably absent from the portrait.

Pumadyne's Chief Financial Officer, Gerard Whipple, had known Alderson back when his father still ran the company, and every time he walked into Corporate HQ and saw that self-aggrandizing portrait, he took a moment to forcefully remind himself of its incongruities. The elder Stern had been the one to advance Megakat City's self-defense and military dominance after Megawar II's close, but it had been tempered with social responsibility, and securing freedoms and stable democratic civilizations in the modern era. By contrast, his son had grown up in the shadow of his father and his father's achievements, and that had caused a great deal of friction. Eager to prove himself just as capable, if not more so, Junior's ambitions had been more naked. He still spoke of the same values his father held, but whereas the Elder Stern had sold only to Megakat City, Junior's insistence on selling to "Allied" nation-states had ballooned Pumadyne's profit margins, and secured his rise to the post of CEO after his father's death by cardiac arrest.

The portrait of Alderson Stern Sr. had once hung in that exact spot. It had also been far more humble.

The security guards waved to Gerard as he passed through their check-in station and fed his briefcase through their X-Ray scanner, which displayed the contents. After confirming there were no weapons or explosives inside, they handed it back to CFO Whipple, who continued to the elevator. After stepping in and punching in his floor, he stood back and nodded politely to the others who got on after him.

The elevator music was piped in, placid, and just more instrumental versions of pop hits from ten years ago. For as many elevators as Mr. Whipple had been in over his life, he wondered why they all seemed to use the same recorded music. He would have killed to get even a dab of Classical in the mix. The other executive in the elevator, a younger up-and-comer he didn't remember the name of, kept to himself and left Whipple alone with his thoughts. He got off a few floors before Whipple.

Finally reaching the fourth highest floor that contained his own expansive office along with the executive boardroom and other facilities, CFO Whipple got off and made his way past his secretary's desk.

"Good morning, Mr. Whipple." The middle-aged shekat greeted him politely.

"Mrs. Thomlinson. Any messages for me?"

"None so far, sir. You have a lunch meeting scheduled with CEO Stern, however."

"I see. Thank you, Mrs. Thomlinson." He gave her a nod and a smile, then slid his keycard into the lock of his office and stepped inside.

With the blinds drawn as they were at the start of every day, Mr. Whipple set his briefcase on his desk and reached for the power button on his computer. The machine was about halfway through its warmup when a flickering of light and a sudden burning smell of ozone from another corner of his officer pulled his attention away.

To his horror, out of an empty wall socket poured a stream of living electricity, which took on kat form and then solidified into a menacing figure adorned in an all too familiar Surge Coat.

"You…Ha…" Whipple started to stammer, but Hard Drive spun around and nailed him with a bolt of voltage to the chest. It dropped him back into his chair, and the electrical menace chuckled lowly as the office chair rocked slightly under Mr. Whipple's weight.

"Now, now, daddy hates tattletales." Hard Drive mocked him, taking a look around the room. "Hm. No cameras. Windows drawn, door locked." He sneered and leaned over Whipple. "It's like you're asking to get attacked." He adjusted his coat and paused as he considered the CFO. "Hm. You still have a heartbeat, though. No matter. Excuuuuse ME!"

Hard Drive shoved the chair, Mr. Whipple and all, away from the desk and stared at the monitor as it powered up, flashing the welcome screen. "Hm. Password protected. If we had more time, we'd look around your office for whatever pad of paper you hide in your desk with all your old passwords. But, since we're on a schedule here…"

From one part of his coat, Hard Drive produced a nozzle akin to a vacuum hose and pressed it up against the outer floppy disk casing of the computer. In moments, the computer fritzed out as the password protection was overloaded and cracked by a brute force algorithm, and then the monitor began showing folder after folder.

"Every databank, every off-site server, accessible with a high enough security clearance. My, my, Mr. Whipple. You really are important." Hard Drive leered over his shoulder to the unconscious CFO. "This when I'm supposed to say thank you, but you'll pardon me if I just zip over it."

The silence as his Surge Coat downloaded one file after another through Pumadyne's secure network was broken up solely by an uncharacteristic humming from the master hacker and thief, his tail swishing behind him in time with the slight discharges from his most recognizable garment. After a good minute and thirty seconds, Hard Drive paused and blinked, pulling out a small LCD display from his coat's interior connected by a wire.

"Oooh. Well, whoever said 64 Kilobytes was enough for anyone clearly didn't take this place into account. And speaking of accounts…" His malicious grin intensified, and the pathway of his file downloads changed briefly.

In under five minutes' time from his first arrival in CFO Whipple's office, Hard Drive disconnected his data plug from the computer and then fired another jolt of electricity into the device for good measure, frying the delicate internal components to degaussed slag. A thick puff of acrid ozone-tainted smoke rose up out of it.

"Well, you've been a wonderful scratching post, Mr. Whipple, but you know how it is; places to go, lives to ruin, secrets to sell." The electrified hacker fluffed up his coat's collar and winked at the unconscious kat. "Ta-ta~!"

In another blitz, Hard Drive became pure electricity once again and zipped back into the wall outlet he'd emerged from, while the cloud of smoke from the ruined computer rose up towards the ceiling and the fire detectors.

Mr. Whipple came to sputtering as his entire office was drenched from the automatic fire sprinklers the detectors set off. His secretary rushed in moments later, calling his name out in worry as he muzzily came to.

"Sir, what happened?"

"It…" He coughed, wincing as he felt around his chest and hit the scorch mark underneath the charred spot on his suit. "Hard Drive. He was here. He…" CFO Whipple's eyes boggled out and he jerked out of his chair, staring at the ruins of his computer. "Oh no."

"Sir? Did I hear you correctly? Hard Drive? That super criminal? What did he do?"

"My computer." Whipple whispered. "He must have…he's covering his tracks. He did something with my computer."

"Are you saying he could have stolen some files?" Mrs. Thomlinson exclaimed.

"I need to see Stern, now." Mr. Whipple tried to march out of the room and stumbled, nearly falling until his secretary caught him and kept him up on his feet.

"What did he take?" Mrs. Thomlinson asked.

"I don't know." Whipple told her honestly. "But theoretically? He could have taken everything."

Enforcers Headquarters

Main Lobby

The main lobby of Enforcers Headquarters had two separate sets of guards. The first were brown suited security personnel with hats by the front entrance who kept tabs at the metal detectors you were required to pass through to get in, and the second were the more ominous helmeted and bodysuit-wearing 'patrol' Enforcers who patrolled the locked hallways as well as the elevators that led up to the rest of the impressive structure. The line to get in moved smoothly enough, and soon the young and pregnant shekat found it was her turn. Her backpack and duffel bag were dropped onto a conveyor belt and fed through an X-Ray machine that ran alongside her, and she emptied out her pockets of her keys, wallet, and loose change before passing through the metal detector herself.

Satisfied that she didn't beep on her pass through, and after a full glance at the bag and backpack's X-rayed contents, the security guard inside the bulletproof glass kiosk with the monitors nodded and waved her through the turnstile, which turned green after he unlocked it. She picked up her bags on the other side of the small checkpoint and trudged towards the reception desk.

Desks, rather. There were five separate kiosks for visitors to use, and a line in front of each one. Weary but determined, she got in the shortest line and waited her turn. It took another ten minutes, but at last, the kat in front of her finished their business and was passed a temporary ID badge before they trudged off.

"Next!"

Sighing in relief, the brunette marched up to the counter. "Hi, I'm…"

"Please stand behind the yellow line." The bored-looking male in white shirt and black tie at the counter interrupted, not bothering to look up from his computer screen. She snapped her jaw shut, frowned, and took two deliberate steps backwards until she was behind the bit of yellow tape stuck to the granite floor. "Yes, good. What can I help you with today? Are you here for a moving or parking violation?"

"Uh..no."

"Ah." The kat frowned at her answer and begrudgingly looked up at her. He blinked twice after seeing her 'condition', and sat up a little straighter. "Right then. What's the purpose of your visit here today then?"

"I'm looking for someone. An ex-Enforcer. I thought you could help me get a hold of him."

"I see." The tomcat nodded. "Is he the father?"

"Excuse me?"

At the sound of her shrill tone, the receptionist raised his hands up palms out to try and placate her. "I'm…I'm sorry, I just…"

"Yeah, no." She cut him off this time, her irritation clear to see. "The kat I'm looking for is my uncle. Now. Can you help me, or are you going to be more of a jackass?"

Reddening at her tone, the tomcat glanced away. "I apologize. Now. What's his name?"

"Clawson. Jacob Clawson."

"And your name?"

"Miranda. Same last name."

His fingers clattered away on his keyboard, and after a few seconds, the receptionist leaned back and frowned. "Hm."

"What?"

"There's a flag on his record, miss. They do that with former Enforcers who receive a less than honorable discharge or who are currently under sentence. We are unable to disclose personal contact or address information of current or former Enforcers for security reasons, but this flag means that I am not even allowed to pass a message on to him either for you."

Miranda Clawson felt the world start to fall out from under her. "What the hell do you mean, you can't send him a message?!"

By a stroke of cosmic timing, a very tired and exhausted Sergeant steadily working towards retirement age came out of one of the elevators just then, on his way to shuffle out of the front entrance to grab a bus for the short ride back to his apartment. He stifled a yawn after a particularly long (Though thankfully boring) night shift, and was walking by the desk when the sight of a familiar shade of dark russet fur stopped him dead in his tracks. The body shape the fur belonged to made him blink and look over, and he relaxed for a moment when he saw that the kat was female. And pregnant. He was tired enough that he was seeing things, apparently. There was no way in hell that Jake Clawson would ever be down in the main lobby of Enforcers HQ, after all…

"Listen, buddy, I need to find my Uncle Jake! I don't give a damn about your rules and regulations, I need to get a hold of him!"

The sergeant stuttered in place and looked over again. An uncle. Now, some dim part of his memory percolated. Hadn't the captain once mentioned he'd had family from down south?

The receptionist looked to be just about out of patience, and he was giving a sidewards glance towards the armored Enforcers, like he was mulling over calling them in to drag her out of the lobby.

"I'm too old for this shit." Sergeant Barnes exhaled, strolling over to the receptionist desk. He reached a hand past her and knocked on the counter twice, which was startling enough to make the girl fall silent. The receptionist glanced up and recognized his rank insignia, looking immediately relieved. "It's okay, Freddie. I'll handle this." He told the receptionist, turning to look her square in the face.

She had plenty of fire and gumption, but it was obvious she was running on empty. And hauling a kid around in her condition?

"You're looking for someone?" He asked, trying to sound casual without making his own fatigue too obvious.

"Yes. My Uncle Jake." She snapped, regaining her head of steam.

"Jake Clawson." Sergeant Barnes went on. "Yeah, you'd be beating your head against a wall trying to get any information here. But if you're who you say you are, I could help you. Got any ID?"

"…Yeah. Hang on." She pulled out a wallet and removed a driver's license, handing it over.

"Miranda Clawson. Age 18. Residence: Katlanta." Barnes finished reading it over, nodded, and handed it back. He then pulled out his own walleted shield, complete with a photo ID of himself. "Here. That's me."

"Sergeant Barnes." She intoned.

"Courgry." He nodded, taking it back.

"How do you know my Uncle Jake?"

"Easy, kid. I used to work for him." That admission finally got her to shut up and look surprised for a change, and Barnes glanced around, glad that he'd kept his voice low. As it was, the receptionist had a sour look on his face from the entire mess. Barnes sighed, and gestured with his head towards the front doors. "I just got done with a night patrol. Come on. There's a diner a block away from my place with a payphone. We can call him from there, and get you something to eat while we're at it. You look about ready to keel over."

"Yeah, so do you." She shot back at him.

Barnes snorted and walked past her, strolling out through the security gate with a flash of his badge and ID to the guard, then motioning behind him as Miranda Clawson fell in step. "She's with me, fellas." With far less pomp and circumstance than her entry had entailed, she left the building, following after him.

Leo's Diner

One quick taxi ride later, the two were landed in a booth in a picturesque diner. Barnes had taken one look around the place before moving to an open booth and landing in place. Miranda had shoved her bags in first, then sat opposite him. A frumpy looking shekat came over with a glass of water and a pot of coffee. "Hey Barnes. You're not usually here on weekday mornings."

"Special occasion." He yawned. "Decaf for me, Lace. And get her whatever she wants."

"Eggs, orange juice, hashbrowns, peanut butter, and lemonade mixed with iced tea." Miranda quickly rattled off, not bothering to look at the menu.

"You got it, hon." Lacey, according to her nametag at least, smiled and wandered off.

Sergeant Barnes dug in his pocket for a little bit and then came up with a handful of change. He grabbed a napkin and jotted down a number, then passed both over to her. "Payphone's in the back. Go ahead. I'll be here taking a nap."

"Why are you doing this?" Miranda asked him, both grateful and confused.

"Because your uncle's a good fella. And if he found out I didn't take care of his niece when I had the chance, he'd roundhouse kick me into next week." He closed his eyes and slumped back against the faded pleather upholstery. "Now get on. Let an old kat sleep."

Shaking a little as she finally found herself in reach of her goal, Miranda Clawson took the napkin and coins and headed back to the payphone situated in the small hallway next to the bathrooms. She dropped a few in, dialed the number, and waited.

One ring. Two. The receiver picked up just as the third started.

"Jake and Chance's Garage. What can we fix for you?"

Two heartbeats later, Miranda felt her eyes blur. She knew that voice.

"Un…uncle Jake?"

Silence. "…Randie? Randie, is that you?"

She laughed weakly. "Yeah. Hey."

"Holy kats. I didn't think I'd ever hear from you again. Not after your dad…well."

"Screw my dad." Miranda told him. "I'm…I'm not at home anymore, Uncle Jake."

"Randie? Where are you?" She heard the first note of concern enter into his voice.

"I'm…in Megakat City. At a diner. I tried looking you up in the phone book, but they couldn't find you, and the Enforcers weren't really all that helpful. But there was this one old sergeant who helped me out."

"Sergeant Barnes?"

"Uh, yeah. That's him." She laughed a little. She could hear her uncle let out a long relieved breath.

"Good. That diner you're at, is it Leo's Diner?"

"I think so? He ordered me breakfast."

"I owe him a favor then. Sit tight, Miranda. I'm going to drive out to get you. All right?"

"Okay. See you soon?"

"Absolutely." The phone disconnected, and Miranda let out a little more of the tension she'd been carrying. Her nerves settled enough for her stomach and the life inside of it to complain about their hunger, and she made her way back to the table, just in time for her meal to arrive. Through it all, Sergeant Barnes continued to sleep, snoring away gently.

She was more tired than she had known, and as soon as the food settled into place, she'd nodded off to match the old sergeant, and strangely, nobody else in the diner so much as gave them a second look.

Some time later, a hand fell on her shoulder and shook her gently. Miranda blinked a few times and jerked her head sideways, staring into the worried face of the one kat declared persona non grata in the Clawson family. Her Uncle Jacob, and her last lifeline.

"Miranda? Are you okay?"

She broke out into a relieved smile and pulled him down into an awkward hug, because he flailed his arms out to either side of her. "No. But this helps."

One uncomfortable back pat later, Jake Clawson pulled back and looked to her boothmate, who had also woken back up and was staring at the two of them with a smirk.

"Thanks for looking out for my niece, sarge."

"Don't worry, cap'n. It was a family thing." Barnes yawned and got up, stretching as he did. "Now, you two go ahead and get caught up. I'm gonna pay the tab and then I need to sack out."

"Your new captain wearing you out?" Jake asked with a small laugh.

"What do you think?" Barnes shot back, walking to the counter.

Jake rolled his eyes and sat across from his niece. "Randie, what're you doing all the way up here? What happened back at home? And why're you…" He let his voice trail off and gestured to her abdomen.

"You want the reverse order on those questions?" She shot back.

Jake shrugged as the waitress came over and poured him a mug of coffee. After giving her a thankful nod, he picked it up, sipped at it, and looked at Miranda again. "Whatever order you want."

"Okay." She looked off to the side. "Met a boy. Thought we had something special. Got dumped when I told him I wanted to keep it. Tried to hide it, couldn't. Dad went ballistic, kicked me out. I came here because…because I had nowhere else to go." The last line came with a faint tremor. "And I thought, maybe, just maybe, the uncle that got written off by everyone just like I did could help me out a little."

"I can give you a place to stay, Randie, but I don't have loads of money saved up." Jake tempered her hopeful optimism. "The one thing I can promise you is that you're welcome here. And there are…things that won't be easy, that'll make this difficult. But I'm not going to leave you, or your kid, in the lurch. Not like my brother apparently did."

"God." She wiped at her eyes. "Our family sucks."

Jake laughed sharply at that, taking another draw on his coffee. "I'm amazed you were willing to even to try and find me."

"When you're homeless, Uncle Jake, you get desperate." Miranda picked up a napkin and blew her nose.

He took it from her and squeezed her hand in his own.

"When did you last see a doctor?" He asked.

"I don't know. A few months back? Why? You going to drive me to the hospital?"

"Not exactly." Jake winked at her, and his niece began to wonder if there was some truth to the long-established gossip that her uncle was maybe a little bit crazy.

Intelli-Bank Solutions

1 Hour Later

Intelli-Bank was the largest middle-man in electronic banking transfers in Megakat City and its surrounding province; they monitored and supervised every EBT transaction from inter-bank loans and deposits to ATM withdrawals. They were used to getting phone calls from branch officers, CEOs, Presidents, trustee board members, and making as many outgoing calls as well. The single-floor, nondescript warehouse, a converted meatpacking plant whose air conditioning systems now kept rows of tall, forever running server banks running, was not used to receiving visitors in person. Especially ones as thunderously angry as Alderson Stern Jr, CEO of Pumadyne Industries. The only thing that kept Intelli-Bank's Vice President from collapsing into a twitching heap was that the CEO seemed distracted by something else as well, given how he kept making and receiving phone calls from his bag cellular phone, hastily slung over one shoulder next to his suspenders. Beside him, an ashen-faced CFO of advancing years sat, looking miserable and more than a little banged up.

Alderson Stern Jr. snapped the phone back into place and stared at the company VP expectantly, and it prompted him to reach to the phone on his own desk for the fifth time.

"I need those reports."

"We're working on it, sir."

"Work faster. Our client is waiting." He hung up the phone and gestured to the CEO of Megakat City's largest weapons manufacturer. "My apologies, Mr. Stern. My people are working on generating a full manifest of EBT activity for all of Pumadyne's assets over the last day, but it's taking them a while."

"And here I thought your company prided itself on speed." Stern growled.

"We handle a very large amount of electronic funds for Pumadyne on a daily basis." The VP protested, smoothing back his receding hairline. "Demanding a report of all transactions over a period of 24 hours, with audit oversight, takes time." He glanced over to the Pumadyne CFO. "I'm certain that your associate could tell you just how complex and interconnected Pumadyne is."

"Approximately 24,000 transfers per day, between payroll, outgoing funds, incoming funds, utilities, pensions, general funds, inter-bank transfers, general and special accounts payable, special expenses, transportation, shipping…"

"I get it. I get it." Stern pressed a hand to his forehead. "Pumadyne does a lot of business."

"More, since you started marketing our products overseas. Sir." CFO Whipple muttered, with just enough resentment in his voice to make Stern Jr. stare at him hard. Stern's bag phone went off again, and he ripped the receiver out of its holder.

"Yes?" He snapped, listening intently for several seconds. Then he jerked to his feet, stuck in a panic. "What do you mean, you can't find them?! What about the backu…" He froze again, dawning horror replacing his irritation. "But…all of them? Every project?" He slumped back into his chair, the phone tumbling from his hand. The CFO reached down for the receiver, lifted it up to his head and listened in before he too, went pale. "This is CFO Whipple. Contact Enforcers HQ, tell Commander Feral that myself and CEO Stern will be arriving shortly today. And tell him that it doesn't matter how busy he is, this takes precedent." He hung up the phone, shook his head, and went silent. The Vice President of Intelli-Bank looked between the two kats, his own sense of dread rising. He was spared a prolonged think by the arrival of the shift manager, carrying a stack of printouts full of carefully collated columns. The look on his face made his own sense of fear grow worse.

"We…we had to double check to be sure, sir." The manager stammered. "We called every bank with a Pumadyne account for confirmation."

"Confirmation of what?" CEO Stern snapped, leaning forward and taking the stack of documents before the Intelli-Bank VP could even get his hands on them. It was a curious thing to watch the blood drain from a kat's face. Fur did a terrific job of hiding details, but it wasn't enough. Not in his case, the VP realized. The fear tripled instantly.

Stern's hands started to fall to his lap, and if CFO Whipple hadn't caught the pile of documents, the VP had no doubt they would have spilled all over the floor. Whipple picked them up with shaky hands that still had some power left to them, and read over the documents himself. He also looked crushed, but he could still vocalize and maintain control of himself. A sick little laugh sounded off, and he flipped through the pages. Confirming details. "All of our accounts have been drained." Whipple muttered. "The money was siphoned off in a series of payments just beneath the level which would have required reporting them to the FTC to what looks like about a dozen offshore accounts in the Katamaran Islands. Thousands of transfers. Tens of thousands of transfers, all running concurrently. And none of them raised any red flags, because they…they used my authorization codes."

The VP of Intelli-Bank swallowed. "We…we could reverse the transfers. Get your money back."

"That's impossible, sir." The shift manager spoke up, exhausted. "Once we realized what was going on, we sent out requests to do just that. But whoever had those accounts has since emptied…and closed them. The money is gone."

"Billions of dollars." Stern Jr. whispered, staring off into nothing. "Our operational expenses, our savings, the entire general fund…it's all gone."

"Pumadyne is bankrupt." Whipple said, summing it all up. "There are already reports of automated checks bouncing, holds being put onto our accounts…"

Alderston Stern Jr. jerked up to his feet, just barely holding on to the bag phone around his shoulder. "We need to get to Enforcers Headquarters, now." He reached across the desk with one hand and jerked the VP of Intelli-Bank up out of his seat. "And as for you, I hear one peep of this…this mess being leaked out of your offices to the news, and my lawyers will have your testicles for breakfast. You get me?!" The VP was frightened for a little while before his brain kicked in and reminded him of another sneaky little detail. He laughed in disbelief. "What lawyers, Mr. Stern? You're broke, you can't pay them." Pumadyne's CEO released him as if he'd been burned, and stumbled back away with his face locked in a rictus of scowling, impotent rage. He stormed off, and a few seconds later, documents of the company's implosion in hand, CFO Whipple followed.

Professor Hackle's Home

Megakat Shores

Wednesday, Early Afternoon

"Bear in mind, child, that I left the medical field back when I was your age." The positively ancient looking scientist croaked as he finished powering up his equipment. "However, I remember the basics well enough, and in the old country, we were used to delivering babies without all the modern amenities."

"But you have an ultrasound machine?" Miranda asked unsurely.

"Of a sort." Hackle said, smiling as he lathered up her stomach with water soluble gel and pressed the emitter on it. Another flick of a switch brought the television monitor to life beside her bed, and a blurry image steadily came into focus. "It is simple enough to modify a pulsed sound emitter for imaging. And it seems your child is doing well."

"It is?" Miranda got out with a hesitant croak. Hackle swirled the ultrasound wand head around for a better picture and nodded.

"Of course. Alive and moving. And…Do you wish to know what sex it is?"

"Yes." Miranda bit her lip. "I…I could never get into a clinic that would keep it secret from my parents before."

"You're having a son, dear girl." Hackle reassured her. "What will you do once he is born?"

"Try and be a better mother than mine was." Miranda confessed. "Seeing as my family doesn't want to have anything to do with me now. I'm in the same boat as Uncle Jake. We're both shunned."

"Is that why you came to Megakat City?" Hackle asked, turning off the ultrasound and the television monitor.

Miranda smiled faintly. "I didn't have anywhere else to go."

The old kat nodded and handed her a towel, then lurched up to his feet and reached for his cane. "Well. I cannot speak for the rest of your family, but I can tell you that your Uncle Jacob is a truly good person. You will be staying with him and his friend, Mr. Furlong then?"

"Yeah." Miranda nodded, wiping what was left of the gel out of her fur and fluffing it with her hand. "They said there's a couch at their place in the junkyard that's all mine until they can figure out a proper bedroom." Setting the towel off to the side, she raised an eyebrow. "How did a guy like you end up crossing paths with my uncles? A retired scientist seems like an unusual fit for friends with a couple of former Enforcer pilots turned auto mechanics."

"Oh. Well, work did."

"When did Uncle Jake work with you?" Miranda pulled her shirt back down over her stomach, and Professor Hackle laughed once before shaking his head.

"Not that, my dear. His work. My car broke down. I called them. Your uncle and I found we had much in common, so every now and then he comes out and we tinker with things. I'm an inventor through and through, and I need the company every now and then." The old kat paused, then added softly, "I let them stay out here sometimes."

"You do?"

"Why not? It's a nice house and I'm not using all of it." Hackle shrugged. "I'm certain that your dear uncle would let you come out and stay here if you and your son ever needed a break. And there's a lovely beach nearby that I used to take walks along."

"Not so much anymore?" Miranda asked him.

"I am an old man." Hackle said, winking through his glasses. "Stairs."

Miranda smiled. "Well. I may take you up on that. Any other advice?"

"Pre-natal vitamin supplements. Proper rest. Avoid caffeine and alcohol, although a sensible young woman like yourself seems to already be doing that. Sleep when you're tired, eat when you're hungry." Hackle waved a hand in the air. "Our bodies tell us much of what we need to know, if we know how to listen to it. Beyond that, I can help you find several free clinics in Megakat City to help you with pre-natal care. And I could take you to one, if your uncle and his friend or their two friends are unavailable. You might meet them soon, if you are planning on staying around."

"What can I do to thank you for all of your help?" Miranda asked him.

Hackle thought about it. "You owe me nothing for this, my dear. I take it as part of my penance."

"Would you settle for a cup of tea and some company this afternoon?" Miranda countered. Hackle laughed again, a little less forced, and nodded.

"That, I will accept." He headed for the living room and she made for the kitchen, filling up the kettle before setting it on the stove to boil, and then she went looking through his cupboards for the teabags. She had just found the decaf when she heard him make a noise somewhere between a gasp and a scream, and she raced out into the living room.

Miranda Clawson found him collapsed on his couch and staring at the large television set in the room. She turned to the screen as well, and after a second to read the Breaking News—headline along with the talking head, she flailed for the nearest chair and found it more by accident than design. There was only the image of an impressive building surrounded by Enforcers patrol cars with their lights flashing to give credence to the story banner, but even in Katlanta, she'd known of the company and how important it was.

Pumadyne Industries Hacked, Bankrupted. "No Comment" from Company President.

Enforcers Headquarters

Downtown Megakat City

Early Evening

"Lieutenant, you're the Enforcers press liaison. It's your job to tell them to back off, because this sure as hell qualifies as an ongoing investigation!" Commander Feral yelled at the handset of his telephone from inches away, the thundering bass of his voice carrying through the line without any difficulties. "I've got Stern breathing down my neck right now and breathing fire because word of this got out. Do you know what I want? For Stern not to be breathing down my neck! Now get out there and tell the press that we have jobs to do, so they can politely back off and let us do our jobs!"

He slammed the phone back down on the hook, let out an aggrieved snarl, and then jerked a desk drawer open to reach for the antacids. "Hard Drive." He muttered, shoving a handful of the chalk white tablets that tasted nothing like peppermint into his mouth and chewed away noisily. Another headache after the Zed Incident. The prison that Hard Drive had been shoved in had gotten hit by an errant blast from the towering robot while it was firing away at the Enforcers military cordon as if it had ammo to burn…which, technically it did, given that it had been absorbing everything it could get its wires on. In the breakout, Hard Drive had escaped, but his Surge Coat had been sitting in evidence lockup. It still was, he'd been assured. That hadn't gone missing like the Neural Neutralyzer had.

So somehow, the computer engineer and hacker had managed to get the materials together to build himself a new one. And what had he done? Had he gone after robbing ATMs, or stealing a prototype tank? No.

For once, Hard Drive had done something right. Through a method that still eluded Feral and the investigators out at Pumadyne's corporate headquarters, he'd broken into the CFO's office, instituted a mass transfer of their assets, probably stolen every next-generation schematic and blueprint available on their local network, and then gotten away, leaving the company bankrupt and with every one of its classified and non-classified projects stolen.

President Stern was apoplectic. Feral wanted some butts. He would have preferred it if Hard Drive had just decided to steal hardware and go on a rampage, it would have given the Enforcers something to shoot at. But this kind of electronic theft, the kind of breaking and entering that the digitized hacker could pull off was a threat he wasn't used to. From what his investigators were saying in their initial reports, Hard Drive had gutted the company and gotten away clean. There wasn't a trail for them to follow.

Which meant damage control. The mayor's office had been apprised, and Feral was due for a meeting with them tomorrow morning. Pumadyne, for all the trouble that it got into, was a lynchpin in the security of Megakat City and the rest of the province. The weapons and aircraft and ground vehicles and assault vehicles they made were the backbone of the Enforcers' arsenal. There'd been developments in the works to phase out the jets and tanks and helicopters they flew in the next five years for more advanced models with better avionics, armor, and offensive capabilities.

Now all of that was stuck in limbo. Stern and Whipple were already talking about begging for a bailout, and as much as the idea stuck in Feral's throat, he couldn't exactly say no to it. To say no would mean depriving Megakat City and the Enforcers of the vehicles and weapons they needed to keep the peace against threats both domestic…and foreign.

Pumadyne Industries was, literally, too big to fail.

He sank into his chair and spun it around, staring out through the reinforced glass window of his office to look out over the Megakat City skyline. With the sun tracking downwards, the sky had just begun to turn orange, casting an ominous silhouette over the skyscrapers and office buildings of downtown. He swallowed down the paste of the antacid tablets with a grimace, then reached for a bottle of water, chugging it to wash his mouth out.

"What's your plan, Hard Drive?" He asked the empty air with a growl. "And when did you start using that fried brain of yours?"

Megakat City Outskirts

Thursday Morning

With Jake back at the shop and keeping an eye on his pregnant niece, Chance had volunteered to handle any tow calls they'd received. While there were plenty of tow services within Megakat City, most of them charged an arm and a leg for services outside of the city limits. Most of their calls, with a few rare exceptions, ended up having them pick up stranded motorists on the roads and country byways, and Chance still winced a little when he thought of that one old lady that they'd left stuck on a county road for hours because the SWAT Kats were needed. She got free tune-ups and a pizza out of them for it, though.

The call today had Chance driving around Megakat City to get to the highway that fed from the north. Some tourists had gotten themselves stranded, and based on what they'd been told about the make and year of the car, Chance had already figured that a busted distributor cap was to blame for it. Jake thought it might be an electrical fault, but Chance always tried to go for the simplest answer first instead of jumping to the more complex problems.

There it was, a '92 Derbane Sedan in brown pulled off on the side of the road. Chance chuckled at the sight of it and went on a mile more until he found one of the turnarounds, thankfully not chained off like the cops were sometimes wont to do. He slowed up and hit his blinkers until traffic passed him by, then made a U-turn and quickly shifted to the right lane so he could pull off in front of the dead vehicle.

The driver waited until he was stopped and hopping out before doing the same, and came up to Chance with a stiff smile and a nod. "Hey there." Chance greeted him. "We got a call about a stranded vehicle." He dug out a small pocket notebook and flipped to the page he'd scribbled on to confirm the license plate number. "Yup, license plate matches. Don't worry, we'll get you hooked up here and take you back to the shop, figure out what's going on."

"Right." The older tom sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Not quite what my wife and I expected when we left home today."

"That, I completely sympathize with." Chance said, getting out the chains. "I'm Chance, by the way. From Jake and Chance's Garage."

"Terrence." The kat said, holding out a hand. Chance examined his palms long enough to make sure that he didn't have a bunch of engine grease on them, and shook his hand. "How much will this set us back?"

"Do you have insurance?"

"Of course."

"Then it's their problem." Chance said with a grin. "But we're not in the habit of overpricing tows. The agency wouldn't use us for long if we did. Would you and your wife want to ride in your car once I've got it hooked up, or would you prefer to hop in the truck with me? Your call, it depends how comfortable you'd be in a car tilted at a thirty degree angle."

Terrence laughed once and shook his head. "We'll ride up with you, if it's all right."

"No problem. We've got a brand new pinecone air freshener in there, I don't smoke, and I brought a thermos of coffee if you two don't mind sharing a Styrofoam cup."

"Sounds like heaven, Chance. Thanks."

It took him all of three minutes to get the sedan chained up, hoisted, and secured, and in that time Terrence and his wife had disembarked and gotten settled in the tow truck. As a point in Terrence's favor, he'd crowded into the smaller rear seat and left the front bench's passenger side to his wife. Chance climbed up and in, slammed the door, and reached for the thermos of coffee he'd brought.

"All right, folks. So, where are we headed? My garage is on the other side of Megakat City, south of it by 7 miles or so, and if you'd prefer your car to be taken to a shop closer or in town, I'd be fine doing that."

"You brought coffee." The middle-aged shekat said with a warm smile and a twinkle in her gray eyes as she took the thermos from him. "I think we can trust your garage. But would you be willing to drop us off to where we were headed first?"

"Sure could. But if you'd prefer to ride all the way back to our garage, we keep one or two loaner cars on hand for customers whose cars take more than a day to work on." Chance offered. "It won't look like much, but it'll give you something to drive around in while your car's getting fixed up."

The older couple looked at each other and then Chance received an awkward double stare, with Terrence's visible in the rearview mirror and from the way the fur on the back of his neck bristled.

"Who did you say you were again?" Terrence asked him.

"Chance. Chance Furlong." He cleared his throat. "Mind pouring me some of that coffee? The cup's for you two, I'll take the outer thermos cap."

"No problem, hun." The wife said, unscrewing the plastic-wrapped metal jug. "You usually bring out coffee for your customers?"

"It's cheaper than doughnuts." Chance chuckled uneasily. "Your husband's Terrence, and what's your name, Mrs…"

"Call me Maureen." The shekat said, the wrinkles around her eyes crinkling as she smiled again. There was something about her face that tickled the back of Chance's mind, but for the life of him he couldn't place why it seemed so familiar. She handed him his cup-lid of coffee and poured another serving into the styrofoam cup Chance had brought, giving it over to Terrence. "So. You from Megakat City then, Mr. Furlong?"

"Born and raised." Chance said proudly, smiling and keeping his eyes on the road and on his side-view mirrors.

"Even with everything going on? The terrorist attacks, the supervillains?"

"I know that scares some folks, especially with as much trouble as we've seen the past few years, but this city's got a lot of heart in it. You only hear about the bad guys in the news. The good kats tend to fly under the radar." Chance shrugged. "We've got the Enforcers for the day to day stuff, and when things get too hairy, the SWAT Kats show up. There's more people trying to fix this city than there are kats trying to tear it down."

"Well. When you put it that way, I feel a little bit better. Especially since my daughter works here."

Chance hummed as they passed the city limits. He turned to the ramp which would lead to the highway that drove them around the city instead of through it. "I was gonna ask what brought you to Megakat City. Visiting family, huh? Seems like a great reason to drop by."

"Yes, well aside from the car trouble happening." Terrence muttered, rubbing at his chin. That too drew Chance's attention. "My brother would never let me hear the end of it if he knew that our car broke down. And he's got enough to hold over my head already."

"Yeah?" Chance said conversationally. "How's the coffee, ma'am?"

"Comes out of a can and it's as black as my mascara." Maureen laughed, taking the cup back from her husband and sipping at it. "It's good enough. How about you, Chance? Any brothers? Sisters?"

"Nope, just me." Chance said. "My old man's been gone for years, and my ma passed away five years ago."

"Well, take my word for it." Terrence said glumly. "Don't ever get a brother if you don't have to. Everything becomes a competition."

Chance thought about Jake and how all of their training inevitably devolved into competitions. The Reflex Room, the Centrifuge, the Mongo Pepper eating contests…

It was enough to make the striped tom laugh and shake his head. "Well. Maybe I do know what it's like then. So what does your brother hold over your head?"

"Oh, the usual. How his job's more important. How I'm not 'dedicated' enough to my career."

"Yeah?" Chance sized up Terrence and Maureen with a sidewards glance and a flicker to his rearview mirror. "You're kind of dressed like a lawyer, honestly."

"Well, that must be because I am one." Terrence winked at him.

"I don't get it." Chance said. "If you're a lawyer, what's your brother then? A judge?"

"Oh, no. I'm private practice, and he's got nothing to do with the prosecution of the law. He's law enforcement."

"Ah. He's an Enforcer?"

"Got it in one, Mr. Furlong." Terrence said, raising his white cup in salute.

"Anybody I might know?" Chance asked with a smirk.

"Oh, you might've seen him on the news a time or two."

"Is he a spokeskat for the Enforcers?"

"Oh, no. He runs it."

Chance had his eyes on the road, suddenly glad that the mid-morning traffic going around Megakat City was so much less than the rush hour crowd was. His grip on the wheel wobbled a bit before he clamped down and wrestled it back under control, because he'd finally managed to connect the dots in his head. It was sad that it had taken him this long, given that Felina had showed him a picture of her parents just earlier in the week. It had been taken a while back and Terrence and Maureen Feral had gotten a little older and a little grayer (Terrence seemed to have put on a little weight as well, compared to the picture from Felina's high school graduation), but her dad had the same freaking chin of wonder as Commander Feral did. And in the soft curves of Maureen Feral's face were the traces of Felina's characteristic smirks and frowns.

"Sorry. Windy today." Chance apologized to them, swallowing softly and slipping a mask of a forced smile on his face. "Feral? Your name's Feral? Like the Commander of the Enforcers?"

"Guilty as charged." Terrence shrugged. "Our daughter decided she wanted to be just like her uncle. She works for them, too."

Believe me, I know. Chance kept that thought quiet and downed the rest of his thermos lid of coffee in a single gulp, setting it up on the dash after. "That must make family reunions interesting."

"Believe me, Mr. Furlong, you have no idea." Maureen Feral rolled her eyes, and then reached for her purse. "Would you like to see some pictures of her? She's single, you know."

"Ah. Well, I…I should probably focus on my driving." Chance got out, laughing weakly. "After all, I've got to make sure you two can get to see your daughter safely. You can use the phone out at our workshop if you want to get a hold of her."

"Oh, thank you, but we arrived here early. She's not expecting us until tonight." Felina's mother politely refused the offer. "We'll be a little delayed, but she's working the night shift this weekend, she told us. So we'll still be able to surprise her if you have a car we can borrow while you're working on ours."

Oh, it would definitely be a surprise, Chance thought to himself. He could see why Felina was so exasperated with her mother's interference in her love life. He hit the gas pedal and went a little faster. With any luck he'd get them on the road, their car out of the shop, and them out of his hair before they tried to sucker him into a blind date. Or before they could talk with Commander Feral about the garage mechanic who gave them a tow and got Feral up in arms about the ex-Enforcer hoodlums slumming it in the junkyard with an endless debt. Their unique situation as moonlighting vigilantes only worked as well as it did because Clawson and Furlong had ceased to be active figures in the towering kat's thoughts.

This was shoving all the pieces of his life together into a strange and convoluted amalgamation, and Chance didn't know how best to go from here. He might ask Jake about it, the scrawny kat might have a few ideas about how to manage his very strange life.

Megakat City Hall

City Council Emergency Meeting

Friday Morning

Deputy Mayor Calico Briggs had a lot on her plate these days, and only some of that was enjoyable. Jake had a relative turn up out of nowhere and she'd promised to take his niece into a free clinic tomorrow for a much-needed checkup and maternity care. Mayor Manx had been making overtures about possibly retiring soon and had implied heavily that he'd love to groom her for the position as the presumptive nominee. Felina had called her up this morning, frayed and exhausted after her relatives turned up earlier than expected. And this was supposed to be Felina and Chance's weekend out at Hackle's place in Megakat Shores, which now seemed destined for the rubbish bin with her parents on the scene.

What took up most of her focus at the moment was the emergency session of the City Council that Mayor Manx had called for. Hard Drive's massive hacking and theft at Pumadyne Industries had put the entire city into an uproar. By now, there was no hiding that the largest weapons contractor in Megakat City was in trouble. That was why this session was happening, with President Stern Jr. and CFO Whipple coming hat in hand to beg for the city to open its coffers and bail the company out of trouble. Of course, when they arrived in a luxury limousine complete with chauffeur in full view of news crews and every beat photographer in the city at the steps of the municipal building, the optics didn't exactly help their case much.

For a bailout the likes that Pumadyne was asking for, they weren't looking for millions of dollars, but billions. An incredibly heavy burden for the city and the territories to pay, and that fell well outside of the purview of the annual budget that the Mayor's office had oversight and control with. The city bylaws made it very clear that a quorum of the City Council, those elected from the precincts of Megakat City and the outer districts beyond it, were needed for a vote on any such measure.

The Enforcers had been pushing for the bailout to pass. Manx had made his position clear at the beginning of the proceedings that he saw a bailout as wholly necessary. Callie, for once, was spared from any awkward questions on the subject by dint of her position. As Deputy Mayor, her stance was implied to be the same as Manx's.

But many of the Representatives on the City Council seemed to be of the opposite way of thinking. And they were making themselves heard today.

"Mr. Whipple." Representative Vernwood started, taking the lead on the next leg of the session. Vernwood was one of the old guard, elected from a more well-to-do part of Megakat City full of condominiums and retirement villas that surrounded a golf course. He was typically a supporter of Manx's initiatives, and ran a successful realty firm on the side. "Dealing with money as you do, I'm sure that you're familiar with the concept of RTI."

"Return on Investment. Yes, Representative." Whipple bobbed his head. They'd been getting grilled for two hours, and the fatigue was beginning to show on the aging financier's face.

"Would you care to explain it to us?" Vernwood asked, and Callie could hear the trap in that seemingly innocent request.

Beside Whipple, Stern cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. Whipple sighed. "It is the idea that money given towards financing a project or product should result in profit on behalf of the investor."

"Yes." Vernwood smiled, removing his glasses theatrically and making a show of cleaning the already spotless lenses with a handkerchief. "It is a concept that every investor and shareholder of every major company takes an interest in. But to be frank, I am not sure where the Return on Investment lies in simply handing over countless billions of dollars to Pumadyne Industries. Not with your shaky track record over the past five years and your questionable successes and myriad failures."

"Failures." President Stern repeated the word, tapping a claw on the table he and Whipple sat at. "Pumadyne Industries has been at the forefront of weapons development and this province's largest supplier of weapons for the national and domestic defense since Megawar II. We employ over 30,000 kats from research and development to security and distribution. Our annual income is greater than the GDP of many nation states. By what measure do you call our company a failure?"

"Security, for one." Another representative, one that Callie didn't know quite as well, spoke up. He dressed in pressed khakis and a polo shirt, and was built like a fella who spent most of his time outdoors. "How many incidents has Pumadyne Industries been at the center of in the last half decade? Four? Five? You've been averaging one crisis a year. Not exactly a good track record. Do you even bother to keep track of the number of days since your last industrial accident anymore?"

"Most of those accidents were caused by outside factors. We can hardly be held accountable for the misguided actions of super-criminals and misanthropic entities." Stern pointed out tersely.

"Oh? Was I just imagining it when two massive robots went rampaging through downtown Megakat City and squared off on top of the Twin Towers before they fell hundreds of feet and cratered a square city block? Robots built in-house at Pumadyne and designed to be weapons of war?" The well-built representative leaned forward in his chair, not hiding his glare. "It was months before the damage to the city's infrastructure was repaired after the cleanup. There were sections of the city without reliable access to utilities after that little debacle. Lives were affected. The lives of my constituents."

"If you want to blame someone for that mess, I would suggest you take it up with the Metallikats." Stern countered frostily.

Another representative, a ginger-striped queen Callie recognized as hailing from a poorer district adjacent to the one she'd grown up in spoke up next. "The same Metallikats who recently broke into Pumadyne East, stole another prototype weapons system, and went joyriding through eastern Megakat City. It took the Enforcers and the SWAT Kats working together to put down that threat, and Mac Metallikat still got away. And what about that giant robot that attacked one of your production facilities and made off with a giant laser? As I recall, there used to be a mountain some miles away from us that no longer exists."

"Again, you can't hold Pumadyne culpable for the actions of outside agents!" Stern pressed the point, fed up with what must have looked like, to his eyes, empty posturing for sound bites on the news. "That was a satellite we had scheduled for deployment this year, one designed to help mitigate earthquakes in progress elsewhere in the Federation. Losing the Mega-Beam wasn't just a blow to Pumadyne, it hurt MASA and it resulted in us losing a major contract!"

Then there was Representative Bill Lyons, who was the rising star because of his work on the NDC. "True. There is some precedent behind the idea that you don't charge the manufacturer of a gun just because the kat who pulls the trigger uses it to commit murder. But, President Stern, I am someone who believes in accountability. And from where I'm sitting, over the past five years, there has been very little of it. By and large, the years of Pumadyne Industries' operation under your father's leadership were quiet and untroubled. But once he passed on and you took over, your corporate culture changed. Once upon a time, Pumadyne manufactured goods solely for the use of Megakat City's defenders and peacekeepers. But under your stewardship, Pumadyne began selling its products overseas to other nations. Profits became the focus of Pumadyne instead of protection."

There were some kats who had a way with words, and Callie found herself watching Lyons with sharp eyes. Even as Stern sputtered and Whipple went pale, Representative Lyons rose up on his feet and smoothed out the line of his coat. Nobody else spoke, Lyons had command of the room and he was using it to its fullest.

"You say that you can't be blamed for all of the things that happen because some lunatic waltzes into Pumadyne and makes off with some tank you've been developing. Or some new experimental fighter. Or those Macrobots. Or that satellite weapon. And most recently, that prototype Mech Suit." Lyons narrowed his eyes. "Here's what I find curious, Mr. Stern Junior. How is it that Pumadyne keeps promising all of these wonderful new innovations and they always, always end up being stolen and turned against the very kats that they were designed and supposed to protect?"

"Megakat City is a dangerous place! It's full of lunatics and madmen, and Pumadyne is the one making the gear that the Enforcers need to help protect it!" Stern shouted. "We need this bailout! Megakat City needs it!"

"And yet Megakat City isn't who is receiving your best work. Criminals are. Other countries are." Lyons countered coldly. "Our Enforcers are still flying jets that are derivative of the F-86 Sabre, an aircraft forty years past its prime. When the alien Mutilor attacked and nearly destroyed the entire world, the Enforcers were powerless against his forces and were unable to even get aboard his ship. It took the SWAT Kats to solve that crisis. Just like it took the SWAT Kats to resolve every other crisis that's happened which was too much for the Enforcers and their outdated equipment. You may not be pulling the trigger, Stern, but every metaphorical gun that's been pointed at our city and our territories has your fingerprints on it. So you'll excuse me if I'm skeptical. You refuse to hold yourself and your company accountable for the atrocities that have happened. Every lawsuit ever brought against Pumadyne in regards to damages and loss of life was dismissed. You pay lip service to the mantra of protecting Megakat City. You aren't. The only thing you've ever been concerned about protecting was your bottom line and your Christmas bonus. Megakat City has paid in damage and loss of life for every single one of the failures you continually argue that you aren't responsible for. Perhaps if this were still your father's company, I might be willing to vote in favor of this bailout. As it stands, Megakat City isn't your priority, hasn't been for a long time. You go where the money is, and Megakat City has trouble enough already making ends meet. You want to be bailed out? Go ask your overseas customers. We have paid enough, Stern Junior. We have paid in blood."

"Order!" The head of the city council declared loudly, pounding a gavel. "You will take your seat, Representative Lyons. We are not here for you to give speeches. This emergency session is to ask questions, receive answers, deliberate and then vote on the bailout measure. You will leave political posturing for the campaign trail."

"Apologies." Lyons said, sitting back down. Callie kept her snort of derision inside her head. Lyons had already accomplished what he'd set out to do. She could see it in the way that some of the undecided councilmembers' faces had hardened. This vote was going to end up being a close thing.

More questions were asked. How were they supposed to pay for the bailout with an already tight city budget? How was Pumadyne going to guarantee that this kind of thing would never happen again? What was Pumadyne's timeline for paying the city back (And Yes, the councilmember said to a surprised Stern, they didn't see it as a handout so much as a loan).

There were more accusations leveled. Pumadyne's lack of safe practices. How they justified the cost of obviously inferior hardware that the Enforcers possessed. That line in particular, when combined with a sound clip of five different times Feral had been recorded calling for 'Chopper Backup' resulted in the Commander's face darkening under his fur and for his legendary jaw to tighten up. Why all of Pumadyne's promised upgrades to the Enforcers fleet of vehicles and aircraft never quite seemed to pan out or ever be deployed. What sort of hardware Pumadyne was selling internationally. One councilmember even had come prepared with the sort of thorough financial forensic analysis that companies planning hostile takeovers dreamed of having, not that surprising given that the representative was a CPA in his day job.

At the end, Whipple looked shattered and Stern Junior was run down and sweating through his clothes. The head of Pumadyne Industries made one final plea.

"If we do not receive this bailout, Pumadyne is finished. Our employees will be laid off. Production will be halted. The back-orders for replacement vehicles will go unfulfilled. Thousands of lives, hundreds of families rely on Pumadyne for their jobs, their income. You're asking yourselves how terrible things will get if you support this bailout so Pumadyne can endure. What you should be asking yourselves is how terrible things will be if you allow Pumadyne to go under. You fret about lives lost and damages incurred from things that happen beyond our control. You should be worried about the lives that will be lost if the Enforcers are suddenly deprived of their primary supplier of vehicles and gear, the damages that will be suffered when the supervillains that plague Megakat City are able to work without the check on their madness that the Enforcers provide. You've heard Commander Feral tell you as much; Pumadyne is Needed. You've heard Mayor Manx plead for this to happen. If you want to debate about terms of repayment, or about how the funds are to be collected, fine. But don't use anger and hot-blooded opinions as a reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater."

In the den of politics, Calico Briggs didn't have the breadth of experience that Manx did, but she had good instincts. Those instincts were telling her that something very bad was about to happen, and when she looked over to Feral and saw his grave face, and then saw Manx fidgeting in his chair, it only confirmed her suspicions. She thought of the SWAT Kats communicator sitting in her purse, and wondered if them making an appearance would have changed anything.

The vote was called. By a margin of sixty percent against forty, the bailout to keep Pumadyne Industries afloat was refused.

Pumadyne was bankrupt and would receive no aid for it.

It almost made Callie miss a city-wide supervillain caused crisis. That at least, they could do something about.

This was watching a shipwreck and being unable to turn the wheel.

Jake and Chance's Garage, The Salvage Yard

Friday Night

It was the biggest news of the week still, Pumadyne's woes, and with Felina busy with her parents, Chance was more than willing to let Jake and Callie shack up at Hackle's place over the weekend. Especially since Jake's niece went with them. It gave him time to keep working on the Derbane Sedan that Terrance and Maureen Feral had driven in with. He had his communicator lying on the rolling toolcart beside the car, and while Callie kept Miranda Clawson busy and distracted, Jake had used the opportunity to radio back while he went for a walk.

"This whole mess is just unbelievable. If Pumadyne's gone, the Enforcers are going to be hurting."

"Like they weren't already?" Chance countered, smirking as he finished installing a new distributor cap. His hunch had been right; the thing had been cracked and without a proper flow, the engine had just given out. "What I want to know is what the heck Hard Drive's game was."

"It's escalation." Jake told him. "He started off knocking over ATMs for cash. The first time the SWAT Kats dealt with him, he'd just gotten done stealing all those military secrets from the Enforcer databanks. This is just a step up from him. If he was wanting to demonstrate that no bank account or corporate secret was safe for him, he's pulled it off."

"Yeah." Chance grumbled. "And you think he's smart enough to come up with that all by himself?"

"He was smart enough to build himself another Surge Suit after the Enforcers impounded his last one. And don't ask me to explain how he built the first one either."

"Right." Chance exhaled. "Well. I've got this car all fixed up finally."

"The one that you towed in yesterday at lunch?" Jake asked. "You were a little out of it when I saw you after."

"Yeah." Chance wiped his hands off on a shop towel and grabbed the communicator before moving around to the driver's side door. "That might have something to do with the fact that this car belongs to Felina's parents."

Silence persisted for all of five seconds, and Chance could hear the fireworks going off in Jake's brain over the line. "You're telling me that the car you're working on right now belongs to…that the kats you gave a tow to…"

"Terrence and Maureen Feral." Chance slid into the driver's seat with a loud sigh. "You can't make this stuff up."

"Must have made for an awkward conversation. Do they know you're dating their daughter?"

"I told them my full name and they didn't even blink. And no, they don't know she's with me. They seemed…kinda pushy, though. For getting her into a relationship. But it's not my fight, and things are awkward enough in her life right now."

Jake laughed. "How do you get yourself into these messes, ace?"

"Hell if I know. Got any advice for me, sure shot?"

"Uh, no. I really don't. To be honest, my mind's in a half dozen places right now. Miranda's going to be around for a while. After her kid's born, she wants to get into a nursing program somewhere. I think Callie was trying to talk her into looking at Megakat University. And in the meantime she needs to save up some money. I was thinking…"

"Uh oh." Chance grumbled, turning the key in the ignition. There was a bit of a sputter, but then the new distributor cap did its job and the engine turned over, rolling into an idle. "Car works. But you thinking usually means more work for us, and we're not done getting the secondary hangar up and running yet."

"How would you feel about giving Miranda a job at the shop?"

"Uh, no offense buddy, but I don't think a pregnant shekat's a good fit for car repair."

"No, not that! Geez, Chance. I meant answering phones, calling up kats when their car repairs are done, handling the billing…"

"Paperwork, basically."

"Basically."

Chance thought about it. "Kid's had it kind of rough. We can't pay her much, though. We're not exactly living the high life ourselves."

"Callie might have some ideas to help with that with some government programs. And Hackle's already half in love with his 'honorary granddaughter' anyways, he could chip in a little."

"Okay." Chance gave in. "We'll give your niece a job running the phone and taking checks. Just remember we've got our own bills to pay."

"Trust me, that I never forget." Jake hummed. There was another pause as Chance turned the car back off, and the brawny pilot found himself tensing up. Sure enough, the other shoe dropped. "I had another idea. With this whole Pumadyne debacle…the Enforcers are going to be stretched even thinner. They don't have a manufacturer to replace their busted gear anymore, not until they line up a new supplier. I figured we'll probably need to step up our game some. But you're not going to like it."

"Maybe." Chance hedged, getting out of the now repaired car and trying to ignore the twinge above his eyebrows. He listened anyways.

Jake was right, of course.

He didn't like it.

Undisclosed Location

Saturday Morning, 2 A.M.

Life had never been kind to the computer engineer turned petty criminal turned semi-supervillain known as Hard Drive. The Surge Coat was his trademark, a piece of engineering that had been an absolutely miraculous creation. At the time, he'd laced wiring and electromesh lattice into a coat bulky enough to hide the delicate electronics and the power cells and the capacitors inside of it. He'd meant it to be a combination of a walking computer hard drive and interface, and to provide him some needed self-defense in the form of electrostatic discharges. He hadn't anticipated the suit's main power, nobody had. Through mechanisms just beyond existing physics that he'd never quite figured out, it enabled him to transform himself into electrical energy and traverse vast distances as a power surge in the electrical networks.

Wearing the Surge Coat was a rush. Like adrenaline and the wildest psychedelics. The world buzzed when he was wearing it. Everything was so much brighter. So much more real. His mind had always worked too fast for the rest of the world, but when he was diving through power lines, the world finally moved as fast as he did. At least, the parts of it he cared about.

Losing it and 'detoxing' had been agony, and the medications they'd put him on, a combination of anti-psychotics and ADHD medications, made him feel like he'd gone from a Pentium II back to a 286 processor. He would have done anything to keep feeling that rush.

When he got out after some crazy monster robot started attacking Megakat City and eating machines, it was rough living for a while. Sleeping in alleys. Dumpster diving. And then Dark Kat had showed up. He offered to help Hard Drive make a new Surge Coat. He offered to make it even better. And it was.

So what if Dark Kat asked him for a favor? It wasn't anything that Hard Drive hadn't already done on a smaller scale, after all. And the towering purple-furred behemoth had been pretty pleased with the results. Hard Drive was a little leery of the kat still, considering that the last time Dark Kat had teamed up with anyone, it had been Viper and the Metallikats and they'd all ended up betraying each other. But the one time Hard Drive had worked with him, he'd played his part. It had all failed, of course, but Dark Kat couldn't blame him when he hadn't done anything to alter the plan.

Hard Drive just wished that he knew what the criminal overlord was thinking. He'd never been forthcoming about his plans, after all.

Not even now, when the heist had been done for days and Pumadyne was falling apart. He just sat there behind his desk and chuckled darkly while Hard Drive stood and waited for him to finish.

"I wouldn't worry if I were you, Hard Drive." The behemoth in his black and red cloak lumbered, safely ensconced in the back of the underground bunker that served as a place of residence. Hard Drive didn't think that it was the monster's only residence, though; Dark Kat's ability to break out of prison at a whim spoke volumes of his preparation skills. "I am not a kat that is wasteful by any means. The wealth and wonders of Pumadyne will be used well."

Getting to Dark Kat's bunker had been a challenge. The city's power grid only took him so far. There was a point where the wires ran out the deeper he went and the corridors were lit by candles, something that seemed to serve the Creeplings well. For all that they were brightly colored gremlins, they knew how to dive and hide into shadows (And emerge from them) better than anyone he'd ever met. Every time that he'd been summoned after their first meeting, he'd had to walk these long corridors in the dark. Walk. Maybe Dark Kat meant it to be a humbling experience. Something to remind his visitors of just how important he was compared to them. It seemed like that kind of a power trip.

Hard Drive had spent more time in Dark Kat's company than most would have tolerated, and while it was just guesswork on his part, he suspected that Dark Kat obsessed over power and control.

"Yeah. I guess it's none of my business." Hard Drive shrugged. "And it's not like I didn't get anything out of the deal. A cool million and a half sitting in a bank account, and a new Surge Coat to go wire-riding with."

Dark Kat waved a hand at him imperiously. "Much as you love zipping through wires, you're still a kat with a kat's weaknesses. Like hunger, for example."

"A kat can buy a lot of hot dogs with the money I've got." Hard Drive snorted. "So. Are we good?"

Dark Kat leaned back in his chair, which creaked ominously under his bulk, and steepled his paws together. "A curious question. What do you mean by it?"

"Well. Job's done." Hard Drive said nervously. "So, I figured I'd just zip outta here. Let you get back to whatever plan you're working on."

Dark Kat's head moved once, up and down within his hood. "If you like. But if you wish to remain, I could make room for a kat of your talents within my organization."

"Pass." Hard Drive shook his head. "Assuming I have a choice, that is."

"You have a choice, yes." Dark Kat's rumbling voice answered him. "You wish our partnership to be concluded?"

"Are you going to kill me if I say yes?"

Dark Kat laughed at that. "Where did you get such an idea?"

Hard Drive's hands flickered with electricity. "Are you?"

Dark Kat held up a hand in placation. "No. Our business is finished. You wish to leave, and that is a choice. You have that choice."

"…Right. Okay, then." Hard Drive dismissed the charge from his paws and gave Dark Kat another nod. "Good luck taking over Megakat City. Or destroying it. I forget which one it is sometimes."

"Why can't it be both?" Dark Kat shrugged. Hard Drive turned and left the room, and then left the underground bunker entirely. He was halfway down the tunnel when a heavy door slammed down in front of him. Hard Drive snarled at the betrayal and electrified himself, preparing to zip through the barrier to the other side, and…

And he bounced cleanly off of it, hissing in pain as the chatter of Creeplings closed in on him.

"You had a choice. You made the wrong one." Dark Kat's voice echoed down the tunnel from the darkness, as candle after candle was blown out. Hard Drive ignited his hands in power, turning himself into a living torch and baring his teeth. "A rubber-lined door. There's no escape for you down here in my home, I'm afraid." The first wave of Creeplings closed in on him, and he blasted them back as burned barbecue. They were all carrying strange glittering odds and ends, like silver string or tassels, and his power arced off of it in a way that set his teeth on edge.

"You bastard! We had a deal! You double-crossing fink!" Hard Drive yelled, as a second wave of the scrabbling, snarling pink minions swarmed him from even more approaches. One got on his back and he felt a sting along his neck before he shocked the thing to death and threw it off of him.

"I said I wouldn't kill you." Dark Kat reminded him, his looming form finally stepping out of the darkness with his eyes burning yellow. He didn't run, he walked with methodical steps that had his claws tapping on the cold stone of the corridor. "I said you had a choice. All that was true. But the fact is that you know too much of me to just be allowed to walk away. In that suit of yours, you are a menace that might even supplant me. And that, I'm afraid, I cannot stand. You were useful to me as a tool to further my goals." A couple more of the Creeplings managed to stick him with their glitter tassels, and it wasn't his imagination, those hurt. He threw them off with a howl and found he couldn't turn into a bolt of pure electricity anymore, and lunged at Dark Kat arcing with the power he still could reach.

Dark Kat caught one energized fist and then the other in his larger paws, and Hard Drive saw too late that he'd slipped on some kind of strange gloves. Gloves that stung and leeched the power off of him.

"But a tool that does not perform its function must be either discarded or repurposed." Dark Kat concluded grimly.

The power drain was getting worse, Hard Drive found himself falling to his knees as dizziness overtook him. The surviving Creeplings closed in and slowly began pulling the silvery ribbons off of him when the worst of the outer charge of his aura had dissipated. Having them taken off made the pain he felt through his arms and his hands even worse. "What…what are you doing to me?!" Hard Drive gasped.

"I told you." Dark Kat said. "I am not a kat that is wasteful. And if you will not be useful to me as a tool…"

When the last silver ribbon had been peeled off of Hard Drive, he regained his ability to transform into living energy. The impulse overrode his senses, and he slipped away with a scream into the only available circuit left to him. The one through Dark Kat's gloves.

Dark Kat breathed in and out slowly three times, then removed his gloves. "…then you will serve me as a battery." He undid the flap of his coat and reached inside to where the wires coming off of his gloves connected to a rubber-lined cylinder with a single screen that showed Hard Drive's face, screaming noiselessly at nothing. Dark Kat stared at it and waited until Hard Drive stopped and a fearful look replaced the rage.

"Recognize the technology? It's based on the design of the missile that the SWAT Kats trapped you in back when we last did business together. Of course, I've improved the design since then. You can still hear me, but I've little patience to listen to you rant and rave. Yes, I still have a use for you. Although, you might have preferred death, by the time I'm through with you."

Dark Kat shoved the battery containing Hard Drive under his arm and strolled back into the darkness, his surviving Creeplings following him. "Still. At least I've kept my word."

Commander Feral's House

Saturday Morning, 7:55 A.M.

Some might have thought that a kat of Feral's stature and importance would have lived in some condominium in a towering highrise. The leader of the Enforcers, after all, had to be someone of immense wealth. They'd be wrong, of course.

Ulysses Feral earned more than a grunt Enforcer who walked the beat, to be certain, and his salary was commensurate with his responsibilities, but at the end of the day he was a government employee earning a government wage and working towards his retirement when he'd be on a government pension. Home for the head of the Enforcers was a quiet old two story brownstone with a basement full of spiderwebs and a basement stacked with a punching bag, a weight set, and a treadmill next to the washing machine. He lived in a quiet neighborhood that had been full of families back when he'd only been renting the place, and was more rundown than it had been 20 years ago. It was a lot like Megakat City, really. The shine had worn off, but underneath the patina of age and decay it was a home that hadn't quit.

Even with the water damage after that time Viper had managed to flood the city and mutate the animal population into gigantic monsters. He'd been forced to tear out the hardwood flooring, and expediency and the amount of his flood insurance reimbursement had forced him to settle for linoleum and molded slats in their place, but it was undeniably his, a bastion of solace and solitude when the world insisted on constantly driving itself mad.

And interrupted from his breakfast of coffee, toast, and two poached eggs, Feral found himself standing by the now opened front door blinking in shock as his home and sanctum was two steps from being invaded by the Mother-fragging SWAT Kats.

"Morning, Commander Feral." It was Razor who spoke, with T-Bone lingering behind his smaller partner. The larger tom's brawny striped arms were crossed and he was glaring, but he wasn't saying a word. A point in his favor. "Can we talk?"

"You are talking." Feral muttered, instantly aware of the fact that his longcoat and his shoulder holster with his service laser pistol were back in the kitchen. He still cut an imposing figure even if he was stuck with suspenders and his white button-down shirt with a towel tucked in at the collar. At least the SWAT Kats weren't geared up for a fight, their strange weapon-equipped gauntlets were nowhere in sight. He looked past T-Bone and saw one of their red and blue and black motorcycles sitting parked out on the street in front of his house. It figured. He would've heard the Turbokat coming.

Razor smirked at his reply. "Um. I meant, inside."

"I'm eating breakfast and I don't have extra for a couple of hotshots." Feral stood in the doorway. "I can barely tolerate looking at you two when we're overwhelmed with the crisis of the week. Mind telling me why you're bothering me before I've even gotten into the office? Or why I shouldn't arrest you for solicitation?"

"We're not selling anything."

"Aren't you, though." Feral snapped at them, and T-Bone's shoulders pulled up as though he were preparing to throw a punch. Razor held a hand up and out to the side in front of his partner, and the brawnier tom settled back down again.

"Look. I know that on any given day you hate our guts. And on any given day, either of us…"

"Me, especially…" T-Bone muttered, which made Razor clear his throat and glare back at his partner.

"Either of us would be more than happy to goad you into an expletive-laden tirade. But it's Saturday morning, you have things to do, and so do we. Things that don't involve jumping down each other's throats for once." Razor breathed in and out. "Please. We didn't come here for a fight. We came here to offer a truce. We came here for help."

"The Enforcers don't need your help."

"No, Commander." Razor shook his head. "Other way around. We need yours."

It was a response that Feral hadn't been expecting, and he blinked a couple of times before huffing. "Even talking to you is against my better judgment." Feral conceded, stepping out of the way. "How the devil do you two vigilantes even know where I live?"

"Trade secret." Razor said, walking inside and actually wiping his feet on the mat before stepping inside. T-Bone just stomped inside with his devil-may-care attitude burning bright, but they followed Feral into the kitchen. T-Bone lingered in the open doorframe while Feral sat down and Razor took the only other seat at the small, round kitchen table. Feral stared at him until Razor shrugged. "Okay, okay." He brought up a small metal disc with a tiny antenna that had a magnetic housing and slid it across the table. "We bugged your sedan once. If it helps, we're sorry."

"It doesn't." Feral picked up the offending tracker between his thumb and forefinger and glared at it, examining the fine example of kitbashed craftsmanship before crushing it between his thumb and forefinger. He sprinkled the remains into his napkin and bundled it up.

Razor nodded. "Fair enough. We've been following the news. We were…less than thrilled at the decision the city council made."

"You don't say." Feral mused, drinking some more of his coffee. "Not that it's any of your problem, though."

"The safety of Megakat City is our problem, however. And yours." Razor went on, and T-Bone shifted again. Feral watched the pilot's odd fidgeting and the investigator in him caught on the detail and sussed out its meaning.

T-Bone didn't want to be here. Whatever the SWAT Kats were here for, it wasn't his idea or his plan. It was Razor's.

And Razor had, in the moments where Feral had been forced to deal with the SWAT Kats in close quarters instead of yelling at them over a radio, always come off as the more calculating, the more pragmatic. The more thoughtful of the two vigilantes.

"What are you getting at, Razor?" Feral asked, his curiosity rising.

"The way I see it, Pumadyne getting knocked out leaves you with a problem." Razor told him, leaning his elbows on the table. "Until the Enforcers can line up another supplier for the vehicles and weapons you use, you're going to be running on fumes. Less Combat Air Patrols. Fewer cruisers on the streets."

"No chopper backup." T-Bone muttered under his breath, and Razor shot his partner a sharp look before slumping and shrugging his shoulders.

"That too." Razor conceded the point. "Point is, that puts the lives of your Enforcers at risk. That makes your job harder. So. We're to help."

Feral couldn't help the laugh that those words evoked from him. "Are you asking to sign up?"

"No." Razor shook his head. "I don't think that it would work if we tried to be Enforcers. Do you?"

Feral stared back at the smaller kat, and Razor looked back at him. They both watched the other, searching for something.

"No." Feral finally said. "It wouldn't. So what are you saying then?"

Razor pulled an arm back and dug in one of the pockets of his flight suit, and came back up with a triangular lump of metal and plastic that thumped heavily on the kitchen table as he slid it over to Feral. Feral picked it up and examined it, noting the black and the red color scheme. "What's this?"

"A communicator." Razor told him. "The next time there's trouble bigger than you can handle without sacrificing Enforcer lives needlessly, you buzz us. And we'll take some of your BARCAP patrols at night, so your techs have a chance to make sure that your jets are serviced properly. I don't want any planes falling out of the sky if you have an alternative, and I think you're of the same mind."

He was, Feral admitted silently. Damn it all. His fingers tightened around the thing's edges. "You're willing to follow orders?" He growled out, and that made T-Bone hiss through his teeth for some reason.

"Give us a sector. Give us a shift. We'll cover it." Razor nodded. "Get in over your head, you punch that button in the middle there, and we'll answer. Megakat City is too big for us to protect. It's always needed the Enforcers. It's always needed you. We showed up because sometimes there are things too big for you to handle on your own. And right now, with things the way they are, there will be times where we need to be somewhere to save lives. And we can either spend all night listening in on Enforcers broadcasts when we're able to crack your encryption…or we do it this way. We're asking for your help. We're asking to be a part of the solution because of this crisis. Not another problem."

"Why the hell couldn't you have approached me years ago with this offer?" Feral demanded. Razor just smiled back at him, and through the mask, Feral could have sworn that the sad and unassuming smile the SWAT Kats' weapons officer had seemed familiar.

"Years ago, would you have listened? Would we have even considered taking orders from you before? Were any of us in a place back then to investigate this kind of a partnership?" Razor asked in reply. "We were your enemy for a long time. Are we your enemy now?"

Feral drummed his fingers on the table. "I don't know what you are. Aside from a pain in my neck."

"Well." Razor shrugged and stood up. "Offer's made, anyways. It's a changing world, Commander. We all have to change with it." Feral stared down at the communicator again, and Razor shook his head and clicked his tongue. "And no. Don't get any funny ideas about using that to track us down. I made that one special for you. Try to pry it open, and it'll fry itself. The batteries should last you about a year so long as you don't take a bath with it."

"Thought of everything, haven't you?" Feral sniped at him as T-Bone rolled his eyes and walked out of the kitchen for the front door. Razor paused and looked back over his shoulder.

"No, I'm pretty sure I haven't. But that's why you're here. To think of the things we can't." Razor tossed a two-fingered salute and ten seconds later, the house went quiet again as the front door closed behind the two vigilantes. Feral dug back into his eggs with a scowl as their motorcycle powered up and tore off through the streets to take them back to whatever hole they called home.

"What, I'm supposed to deputize you two hoodlums now?" Feral groused, and stared at the black and red triangular communicator sitting next to his coffee mug. Like hell that would ever happen, they were vigilantes through and through. They weren't a part of his chain of command, they weren't Enforcers, they hadn't taken the service oath, and they didn't follow orders…

Except Razor just said that they would. More or less. Figuratively speaking, they'd left a door open.

They'd left the choice with him if he wanted to step through it.

Outside of Felina Feral's Apartment Building

Sunday Morning

Most garages wouldn't do business on Sundays, but Chance had a sneaking suspicion that Felina would be more than happy to shove her parents out the door once she could manage it. And it was supposed to only be a weekend visit anyways. Jake and Callie were still helping his niece to get situated, which left Chance feeling like the odd man out, and he was more than willing to get out of there. Hopefully they'd figure out a different living arrangement for Miranda soon, because Chance didn't see how having a screaming kid around the workshop would be at all conducive to their two careers, and getting enough sleep to manage both.

He pulled the Feral's sedan up to the curb and parked in the diagonal spot next to the loaner car they'd been borrowing during the repair. He gave the other vehicle a once-over before going up to the building's call box and buzzing Felina's apartment number, which Terrence and Maureen had so graciously provided him with the rest of their contact information.

"Yeah, who is this?" Felina's voice answered through the squawk box five seconds later.

"Uh, hey. I'm looking for a Terrence or Maureen Feral? This is Chance Furlong, from Jake and Chance's garage, and their car's all fixed up and ready for them. I've got it waiting out front here."

"Oh, thank god." Felina sighed, and the connection cut off. Chance waited outside, realizing when the door didn't buzz that she didn't plan on inviting him up, but that she and her parents would probably be coming out. They poured out two minutes later with their luggage in tow, and Terrence shook his hand while Felina and her mother glared daggers at each other.

"Thanks for coming out so quickly." Terrence said. "I wasn't aware you were open on Sundays."

"We aren't open on the weekends, usually." Chance answered. "But your car was fixed up and I remembered you said this was a weekend visit, so you probably wanted to get back home."

"I was just about to call the firm and let them know I wouldn't be in tomorrow. Guess I won't have to do that now." Terrence smiled. "So, what was the damage?"

"Cracked distributor cap." Chance took off his blue cap long enough to smooth down his hair before he jammed it back on his skull. "Put in a new one and it's running fine. Got here from the garage with no troubles." He quoted a price and Felina's father raised an eyebrow.

"So little?"

Like I'm going to stiff any relative of Felina's. Even if they are related to the Commander.

"It was an easy fix, once we figured out what was wrong with it. And I'd like to leave you with something from your experience here that's positive about Megakat City."

"Well. I suppose I can live with that." Terrence Feral said, pulling out a checkbook. He filled out a slip, tore it off, and handed it over to Chance. "And you'll have to live with this."

Chance took the check and examined the total, raising his eyebrows. "Um. You paid 50 bucks over the cost, Mr. Feral."

"And you're going to take it, because anyone who does deliveries on Sunday morning deserves something extra. And I think you can call me Terry now."

Chance laughed and rolled his shoulders. "All right. Terry. Thanks."

"No, Chance. Thank you." They both looked over to where Felina, in jeans and a T-Shirt with a leather vest, was in an argument with her mother wearing what seemed like her Sunday best. "Sorry you have to put up with the family drama."

"There's no drama. Just mom trying to force me into something I want no part of." Felina insisted, which got a huff out of Maureen.

"Felina, these are the best years of your life! You need to find someone to be with! There's more to life than your job, you know!"

"I like my job! I'm making a difference. I'm protecting this city, do you honestly think that I'd be satisfied sitting around at home and playing house instead of upholding justice?!"

"That's not what I said!" Maureen pressed, her voice getting louder. The two shekats seemed to finally notice their audience, and Maureen flushed under her fur before shaking her head. "Look. If you don't want to go on a date with any of the nice young boys I've found for you, fine. But then you need to make an effort to date someone on your own. A boy, or even a girl. I'm not particular. But you deserve to have someone to love in your life, someone who will take care of you in return."

Felina growled at the implication, then whirled about and stared Chance down, freezing him in place. "You." She said, biting the word out. Chance shivered from the impact of it. "You doing anything tonight?"

"Um…" Chance got out, blinking rapidly.

"Because if you aren't, you're taking me out on a date." Felina cut him off. "A goddamn picnic, even."

"Now, wait just a minute!" Maureen protested, caught off guard by Felina's change in tack. "I didn't mean for you to just pick up the first kat who walked in your field of view!"

"You want me to date someone? Fine. Then I'm choosing him." Felina stepped in next to Chance and pulled his arm out, wrapping hers around it. "Starting from today, I'll date…" And she paused, in what Chance realized was done for effect, "…Um, what's your name again?"

"Chance, Miss Feral. Chance Furlong."

"Chance." Felina repeated, staring back at her parents in open challenge. "And don't start sputtering that a car mechanic isn't good enough for me, dad. Don't think I didn't see you shake his hand and tell him to call you Terry earlier. You only ever do that with people you take a shine to."

Terrence Feral ended up shaking his head and laughing under his breath. "Fair enough. Well, Chance. I guess you're taking my daughter out for a date this evening."

"Um, sure." Chance said, not having to work very hard at faking how awkward he felt about the whole situation. "Any advice?"

"Don't try to make her be someone she's not." Felina's father answered. "It wouldn't go well."

Despite himself, Chance looked at Felina and managed to smile. "Yeah. I'm kind of getting that impression."

Somewhat mollified by the entire debacle, Maureen backed down and allowed Felina her victory. Felina's parents both hugged her, Terrence shook Chance's hand again, and they exchanged the keys of the sedan with the loaner before Mr. Feral loaded up their belongings and they climbed inside. The car turned over and started without incident, and Maureen stuck her head out of the passenger side window.

"Leena, be sure you let me know how your date goes!"

"Oh, god, mom, please stop." Felina sighed, waving back at her. "Safe drive. I love you two."

Her parents pulled out and took off down the street, and Chance and Felina watched them go a block and turn the corner to get back to the main road that led to the highway out of town.

"Well." Chance said finally. "That's one way to come clean about our relationship."

"Make them think it was their idea?" Felina chuffed. "I didn't plan on it, but that was too good an opportunity to pass up."

Chance hummed and pulled her close to him, and Felina let him do it. That was part of their relationship, that sometimes she needed space and other times she didn't. She looked up at him through lidded eyes. "So. A picnic, huh?"

"Yeah. A picnic." She smiled. "I know a great little place out in the desert beyond Shortclaw Air Base. There's a bluff overlooking a river canyon I'd sometimes sweep over during training."

"How are we getting out there?"

"Easy. I'm flying us there." She said, and he blinked in confusion. "In the Turbokat."

"Woah, hey now." Chance cautioned. "I don't even like Jake flying the Turbokat."

"You know, ace, it's okay to let go of the stick once in a while and let someone else do the flying." Felina teased him, leaning up and nipping at the end of his nose.

How could he do anything else but surrender to that look? "Well, I suppose." He said, kissing her back. "Long as you're the one that grabs it after."

Mitch's Place (Bar)

Sunday Evening

Lowell Tailford wasn't surprised to find himself almost alone as he sat at one of the tables in Mitch's Place. It was a dive and did most of its business the rest of the week, but stayed open on Sundays to justify the bartender's love of Sunday night dramas. The other tv in the place was tuned to a sports highlights channel and was going over games from yesterday with the volume turned off, and Lowell didn't pay it much mind as he nursed his beer.

Almost a week after he'd been booted out the door by the Enforcers and prevented from joining the NDC, his mood was as dark and bitter as ever. What did he have going for him in his life? Working a lousy job sweeping floors at a paper mill? A job where his pay'd already been cut and his hours extended because people weren't buying newspapers as much as they used to? It was a shit life, and he'd wanted more from it. He'd wanted to do more. To be more.

His ma, bless her, had always wanted him to make something of himself. Not that there was much chance of it in the neighborhood he grew up in. No, he'd gotten into scrapes when he was a kid and it was enough to scare him straight enough to walk away from stealing tires and car radios and to try for something better. But a GED he'd barely gotten hadn't gotten him far. The NDC had been his chance to prove to himself and the ghost of his ma that he really could be the kind of kat that she'd wanted him to be.

Fat chance of that. Not when the deck was stacked against him. Not when his drive and his hopes and his willingness to commit all meant nothing against the mistakes when he'd been a punk kid with a chip on his shoulder.

Well. The chip was still there, anyways.

He stared at the last inch of beer in his glass and pondered getting a third when the question was solved for him. A kat in flannel and khakis plunked another glass down in front of him before taking a seat with a chilled glass of fermented milk. "You looked like you needed a refill." The tom, a fit fellow in his 30's with flinty gray eyes said with a thin smile. "And a friend."

"Not sure how friendly I'm feeling right now, mister." Lowell said to the man.

"Hm. You look familiar, though. It's why I came over. Curiosity. I think I saw you on the news recently?"

Lowell laughed. "Hell, only thing on the news these days is how that one weapons company got knocked over and went bankrupt."

The other kat looked at him carefully, then took a measured sip of his fermented milk. "No. I've seen you. They were doing a story over that new neighborhood watch thing."

"Neighborhood Defense Corps." Lowell corrected him, grim in an instant.

"Right. They didn't take you." The tom said, nodding slowly. "Damn shame, though. It's why you're here drinking alone, isn't it."

"I could've been a part of that." Lowell muttered, downing a large gulp of his drink. "I should have been. I wanna help people. So I got in trouble when I was younger. Big deal. It's not who I am now."

"I believe you." The other kat said, and Lowell paused when he felt the tom still staring at him. "I think you can still make a difference."

"How? You gonna tell me to join the army? Pass." Lowell muttered. "If they wouldn't take me for the NDC, how great do you think my chances are for getting into the Enforcers? Or something else?"

"Not the Enforcers. Not the NDC." The man said. "I'm part of a group that's just getting started. There's a lot of us who feel like Megakat City has gone wrong. People like you who want to help, who want to make a difference. Who want to take their city and the province back."

Lowell thought of his old neighborhood, overrun with thugs and gangs who were always scrambling over scraps because the rest of the world didn't give them anything else. "Yeah? You got a name?"

"Not yet." The other kat said, quiet in the bar as the bartender ignored them for his television show. He swirled the fermented milk around in his glass before taking another measured swallow. "We're more interested in getting people with the right stuff first. We'll worry about a name after. So, are you in?"

Lowell considered it, then took his beer and drained the rest of it in a series of quick swallows. He set the glass down and stared back. "Tell me more."

And the kat with the flinty gray eyes smiled as he raised his glass up for a drink, staring at Lowell over the rim.