THE GIANT BACTERIA
by William Hiers
Based on SWAT Kats Episode "The Giant Bacteria" Glenn Leopold.
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As the sun began its slow descent heading towards evening, the peaceful setting of a bayside oil refinery was disrupted as the refinery tanks exploded one by one, until the entire place was in flames. An enormous roiling column of black smoke rose into the sky. The bomber, flying a two-engined purple fighter jet with a row of fearsome black spikes down the back, zoomed through the smoke and out across Megakat Bay, a trio of Enforcer jets in hot pursuit.
They fired their lasers, prompting the enemy to swoop back 'round and fly right at the Enforcers. He fired two missiles. One hit the Enforcer jet on the right. The other found a target in the middle jet. The third was engulfed in the explosion of the middle one. All three crashed smoking into the bay without a parachute in sight.
The enemy swung 'round again and did another pass over his downed foes to ensure there were no survivors, then resumed his original course out across the bay, towards the Megakat City skyline.
As he was departing, the Turbokat appeared around the huge column of smoke billowing up from the fiery inferno that used to be the refinery and joined the chase. In the cockpit sat T-Bone and Razor.
"Does this wacko think he can he blow up every refinery in Megakat City?" T-Bone asked, thinking aloud.
His friend cast a glance back at the ruined refinery. "Well, I'd say he's doing a pretty good job so far," Razor replied.
Razor reflected on how this was still early in their career as what the media had called the SWAT Kats. It'd been only a few months since the appearance of their last enemy, the Pastmaster, and his army of giant dinosaurs, and now there was this guy. He'd been on a wild bombing spree since around two in the afternoon, seeming to target only oil refineries. The news could only speculate on his motivations. T-Bone and Razor relished the opportunity to face a fellow fighter jock for a change, especially after evil skeletons and prehistoric monsters.
They passed over what was left of the Enforcers, floating amidst the ocean waves. Smoke still rose from the floating debris. "And he shredded the Enforcers like an old scratchin' post!" Razor said, feeling some anger burning at the deaths of the pilots. His finger on the trigger itched for justice. Their as yet unseen foe was beginning to enrage him further and further.
T-Bone said aloud what he was thinking. "Guess it's up to us to kick this guy's tail!"
Their enemy's craft was an older model jet with only two engines, versus the sleeker Turbokat's three, so catching up to him as they neared the city at the other end of the bay was no difficulty.
"Can you get a lock on him?" T-Bone asked over his shoulder.
"Working on it..." Razor murmured.
He bent forward over his targeting scope. There was a "beep" as he locked in on the enemy jet.
"Gotcha!" he said under his breath. Then, "One Octopus Missile, on its way!"
He fired. An Octopus Missile flew towards their enemy. It looked like an ordinary missile until the front end split apart into an eight-armed "claw," which was designed to slam into and grab a target. They'd used it previously against the Megasaurus Rex without much success, but Razor was hoping it'd perform better this time. It closed on the jet ahead, which continued on its present source and made no indication that its pilot knew there was a missile closing in on him. The Octopus Missile closed the distance rapidly as the purple jet zoomed through the skies over Megakat City's costal district.
T-Bone smirked. "I don't believe it," he said. "The sucker doesn't even see comin'!"
Suddenly, the enemy banked left hard, allowing the Octopus Missile to fly past its tilted underside and to instead hit the side of a seaside hotel, totally smashing a panoramic balcony. The SWAT Kats were shocked, letting loose a "Whoa!" of surprise in unison.
"He suckered US!" cried T-Bone.
"This guy must have eyes in the back of his head!" added Razor, impressed by their enemy's prowess.
No way, thought T-Bone. Nobody's a better pilot than I am! He punched the throttle, the faster Turbokat gaining on the other jet easily. He turned the Turbokat upside-down so that they were cockpit-to-cockpit. Let's get a look at you, he thought. He and Razor looked down. The pilot looked up at them... with a pair of eyes in the back of his head! What were the odds of that? He was a very stocky, broad-shouldered kat with a neatly-trimmed beard, wearing flight goggles with red-tinted lenses both in front and in back to accomodate all four eyes and, somewhat incongruously, dressed in a suit and tie.
T-Bone frowned. "Wow!" he cried. "Look at that! He DOES have eyes in the back of his head!"
They heard evil laughter on their radio, as the voice of their opponent came through the speakers. "You'll have to do better than that, SWAT Kats, to take Morbulus by surprise!"
He suddenly piloted his jet downward, into the city. So, thought T-Bone, your name is Morbulus? T-Bone had another name for him. "'Four-Eyes' wants to play a little canyon tag, huh?" he said, grinning at Morbulus' challenge. "Well, let's play."
He zoomed down after Morbulus. They were well over Megakat City proper now. The Turbokat was right on his tail as both jets zoomed between the skyscrapers, flying low, dangerously close to evening traffic, citizens running for cover as the two aircraft flew overhead. Razor thought this was more than a little dangerous, but but knew better than to try to talk his partner out of this.
T-Bone's pride had been wounded by the mere thought that their enemy was even half as good of a pilot as him, and so he was going to chase Morbulus until he'd bested him. And if it meant pulling dangerous stunts like this, well, then, that was okay with T-Bone! Razor was just along for the ride, and had confidence in his friend's ability to keep them safe despite skirting danger.
Besides, they had a bad guy to catch! Razor locked onto Morbulus' jet yet again. "This time I'll get ya!"
He fire another Octopus Missile, with about as much success at the first, which was none. The villain saw it coming with his rear set of eyes and, smirking over his shoulder at his pursuers, dodged, letting the missile sail past and hit a parked gasoline tanker. The truck violently exploded. Thankfully, as far as Razor could tell, there'd been nobody in the cab.
"Crud!" he cried, pounding his fist against the controls. "There's just no way to hit this guy!"
He was beginning to share his friend's disdain for their wily enemy, and let his emotions, his desire to defeat their foe, cloud his judgment. Angrily, he began loading up every single Octopus Missile in the Turbokat's compliment, intent on firing so many at once not even Morbulus could dodge them all. He was so fixated on looking down at his work, letting T-Bone do the flying, that he wasn't paying attention as Morbulus piloted his jet upwards, going higher above the buildings, T-Bone right behind him.
"Third time's the charm..." the thin SWAT Kat murmured to himself.
T-Bone noticed that they were headed for City Hall. Or at least that the chase was leading in that general direction. The clocktower loomed larger and larger ahead. T-Bone was unsure if the building was going to be Morbulus' next target. He didn't think so, as it'd mark a divergence in his thus far unchanging selection of just refineries. Whatever the case, Morbulus being between them and City Hall meant even he, reckless as he was, knew firing would be a bad idea, considering the horrible possibilities if they missed... which, T-Bone noted with some nagging worry, "Sureshot" had done twice already. If he missed Morbulus a third time and hit City Hall...
He didn't complete the thought. "Uh, Razor--" he started to say.
"In a second!" Razor said distractedly. He fired a barrage of about twelve Octopus Missiles. "Dodge THAT!" he said.
Dodge he did. His rear set of eyes widening in fear as he saw so many missiles flying towards him, Morbulus banked left again, and the twelve or so Octopus Missile continued on towards City Hall. Only then, glancing up, did Razor realize his mistake.
"Uh-oh..."
~*~
In his office, Mayor Manx was on the phone, fretting over the situation and wishing he hadn't turned down that maniacal pilot's demands. He looked very worried and his hairpiece was crooked as he paced back and forth in front of his desk.
"Oh, Callie, it's just so awful," Manx was wailing as he went to and fro, and expensive shoes threatening to wear a hole in the even more expensive carpet. He had the phone cradled between his neck and his shoulder, toying with a particularly stubborn fountain pen in his free hands.
"Relax, Mayor," Callie Briggs said through the phone, currently on her way to where it was thought Morbulus would strike next, the Megakat Refinery, "the SWAT Kats are handling him even as we speak."
Manx looked at a haphazardly strewn collection of papers covered in ink spatters and barely legible writing.
"I can't concentrate on writing my speech for tomorrow's park dedication," he complained, secretly glad for the excuse because he knew better than anyone that even without the threat of the city's oil supply going up in smoke, he'd been experiencing extreme difficulties in even getting the speech started. He was strongly considering just making Callie do it.
"And this blasted pen isn't working properly, and--"
He was suddenly cut off as the entire building shook. An enormous jointed metal claw pierced through the wall of the office, startling him. Manx's toupee flew off and he gave a piercing squeal, dropping the phone. The pen spasmed and spewed black ink everywhere, staining his suit. Dropping it, he snatched the phone up and wailed into it.
"I'm under attack! Callie, save me!"
~*~
City Hall now had a full compliment of Octopus Missiles bristling imbedded into its sides, looking like some kind of angry inverted porcupine with a clock. Razor was angry. Angry at their enemy and even angrier at himself for being so careless and stupid. He just hoped nobody was hurt, least of all Mayor Manx. He was better than this and he knew it!
Morbulus' jet zipped in and out of the city before turning and headed back out over the bay again, towards the Megakat Refinery, the only one he hadn't blown up yet.
"Great!" grumbled Razor. "He's headed right for another refinery!" He felt suddenly weary. "I'm out of ideas, buddy. How 'bout you?"
His partner smirked. "I got a plan that might work."
He flew the Turbokat into a nearby cloud bank.
In his own cockpit, Morbulus watched them disappear and felt immensely satisfied with himself. "Ha!" he laughed. "Those SWAT Wimps gave up!" He eyed the refinery ahead, smirking, having saved this one for last because it bore the city's name. "Now to give the Megakat Refinery a taste of my Morbulus Missiles! The Mayor will regret not paying me that ransom!"
He flicked a switch and the targeting scope locked on to the facility, and his thumb hovered menacingly over the firing button on his steering mechanism. Goodbye, Megakat Refinery! Just a little closer...
The Turbokat flew out of a cloud bank and moved underneath his jet as it drew ever nearer to its target. After a few moments, it became apparent to T-Bone that his idea was working. Morbulus couldn't see them!
"Let's see if you've got eyes UNDER your head, punk," T-Bone said quietly to the bottom of his opponent's jet. "Okay, Razor," he cried. "Now!"
Razor selected a missile he thought would do nicely for the job. Despite everything Morbulus had done, he didn't want to outright shoot the guy down unless he absolutely had to. So instead he chose a missile he designed specifically to non-fatally disable enemy aircraft by simply removing the pilot from the cockpit. "A Cookie-Cutter should do the trick, he said.
He fired. The Cookie-Cutter Missile launched from a panel in the top rear portion of the Turbokat and flew up at Morbulus. Like the Octopus Missile, it resembled an ordinary missile until the sides fell away and a razor-edged metal circle unfolded and magnetically attached itself to the underside of the other jet. The circle then began rotating rapidly until it was spinning fast enough to bite through metal, and began to cut through up into the cockpit.
Morbulus' concentration was broken as he heard the noise. His finger remained poised over the trigger, but he hesitated, confused.
"Huh?" he cried, startled. The SWAT Kats! It had to be! But where? Not needing to turn his head much to take in the world around him, he nevertheless franatically looked left, right, up and down. There was no sign of them! Then where--? He felt the shudder of something drilling up into his craft underneath him, and looked down at the floor. "What the...?"
He suddenly experienced the odd sensation of his cockpit rushing up and away from him and it took him a second to realize it wasn't going anywhere, he was! He fell through the hole drilled by the Cookie-Cutter Missile, ripped right out of his jet! The missile, its job done, fell away. Still in his seat and clutching the broken-off steering stick in one hand, Morbulus dropped like a stone.
He screamed as he felt himself plummetting, discarding the steering stick and fumbling franatically for the button on his seat that would activate the parachute. He didn't need to. A big metal claw on the end of a very long cable shot out from beneath the Turbokat and grabbed the back of his seat with him still strapped into it, halting his descent suddenly. The Cookie-Cutter Missile and the circular section of metal it'd cut free landed in the water with a distant splash. T-Bone put the jet into VTOL mode so it could hover in midair, and gave Razor a thumbs up behind him.
"Looks like we hooked a big one," he said.
"Yeah!" Razor agreed. "He's a keeper!" Suddenly, he saw that Morbulus' pilotless jet was heading straight for the Megakat Refinery. "Oh no!" he cried. "T-Bone, look!"
T-Bone turned and watched helplessly as the jet struck and there was a monumental explosion. A group of Enforcer sedans, lights flashing, followed by the personal green car of Deputy Mayor Calico "Callie" Briggs, arrived near the beach where the refinery was located. They all skidded to a halt as flaming debris rained all around them. A particularly nasty-looking chunk of metal bounced off the hood of Callie's car.
"Oops..." T-Bone squeaked.
Below them, Morbulus, still strapped into his seat, cheered. The last refinery, destroyed after all! Laughing, he unbuckled himself and fell from his seat and into the ocean below. Neither of the SWAT Kats noticed, too absorbed in worrying about the consequences of today's adventure. Nobody onshore had noticed, either, having been too busy watching the explosion. Morbulus disappeared beneath the surface. Underwater, he held his breath and started hurriedly undressing.
T-Bone flew the Turbokat towards the shore. Still in hover mode, he opened the canopy so he and Razor could speak to those assembled. In addition to Callie, Commander Feral was there was well, with several of his armed commandos.
Feral, growling, yelled up at them. "You hotshot jerks! You've destroyed the last refinery in the city!" He pointed at the burning destruction that used to be the Megakat Refinery.
"Cam down, Feral," T-Bone reassured him. "We got your guy."
Releasing the Sky Claw, he dropped Morbulus' seat and it thudded into the sand at their feet. It was empty.
"So where is he?" Feral snarled.
"What are you talkin' about?" asked T-Bone, feeling dull anger building inside of him. Was Feral blind? He leaned and looked down, as did Razor. They saw the empty seat. T-Bone felt his anger replaced by confusion and more than a little worry, suddenly overcome with the desire to bug out of there as fast as they could. "Uh..." he trailed off, struggling for words.
It was Razor who pieced together the puzzle. "Crud! He must've unbuckled himself!"
"You two are going to pay dearly for this!" Feral said with barely-contained fury.
T-Bone felt himself suddenly talking very, very fast. "Sorry, Feral, but I think Razor left something on the stove. Gotta run. Seeya, Ms. Briggs, sorry we didn't have time to chat!"
Without giving them a chance to reply, or Razor a chance to get a word in edgewise, he closed the canopy again. The Turbokat turned and flew off into the setting sun. Feral seethed, watching them go.
"One of these days I'm going to get those two!" he said,
Callie attempted to mediate. Commander Feral's inability to see the silver lining in anything never failed to exasperate her. "At least they stopped Morbulus, Commander. The refineries can be rebuilt."
"At what cost?" Feral demanded, glaring at her, finding her eternal optimism infuriating. "With the Megakat Refinery destroyed, Manx may as well have paid this maniac for all the money this is going to cost Megakat City!"
Callie had to admit that Feral had a point, to some extent. At least about the cost of rebuilding the refineries. It didn't help that the Mayor had commissioned that enormous marble statue of himself for the park. Her beloved SWAT Kats could be so destructive sometimes, and yet she defended them. What was money when a villain extorting the city had been taken care of? If only they had him in custody! She didn't give Feral the satisfaction of knowing he made good points, though, because she didn't like his rude and confrontational attitude.
Suddenly, a commando pointed into the water, cutting him off. "Commander Feral, look out there!" he yelled.
Feral looked over. What appeared to be a body was floating face-down in the ocean. Two commandos waded into the water, grabbed the body, and hauled it ashore as Feral and Callie hurried over.
"Be careful!" Callie urged them. "He could still be dangerous!"
"Yeah," said one of them, "if he was still here."
He held up an empty helmet, and then she and Feral gawked down at what the two commandos had pulled ashore: empty clothes put together to make it look like someone was still in them!
"It's just his clothes, sir," said the commando sheepishly.
"I can see that!" Feral snapped, grabbing the helmet away from him, feeling his temper beginning to boil over anew. He threw Morbulus' helmet away and whirled to Callie, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth.
"He's naked somwhere!" cried the other commando in a half-chuckle.
Feral ignored him, glaring down at the Deputy Mayor. "If they'd held Morbulus until we arrived, that four-eyed freak would be in cuffs right now!"
She was about to reply when they heard the sound of approaching sirens and vehicle engines and turned, seeing fire engines along with some news vans driving up. Ann Gora got out with her cameraman and several other reporters. Just what they needed, Feral thought. The media. The various reporters began stampeding down the beach towards them, as the firemen piled out of their trucks and unspooled their hoses to begin the unenviable task of attempting to douse the flames of the refinery.
Pointing to himself, Feral said, "I'll handle the press. We'll talk later, Briggs."
Turning, he walked to meet the gaggle of microphones, camera lenses and flashing lights thrust into his face in the gathering darkness. His men followed him and flanked him like bodyguards.
"Commander Feral!" Ann Gora said. She was a young, petite redhead in green with a stylish necklace who was always the most eager and energetic of Megakat City's newspeople. "Is this the end of the 'refinery reign of terror?'"
"In a manner of speaking..." Feral said.
Jonny K. and a few of his fellow cameramen turned their video cameras towards the smouldering ruins of the refinery. The reporters continued eagerly pressing.
"What about Morbulus? Do you have him in custody?" a small, orange-haired reporter in a polka-dotted tie from Kat's Eye News demanded eagerly, having to stand on his tip toes to ensure his microphone reached Feral's face.
By now, the villain's name had been released to several different news outlets, and so there was no longer any mystery regarding the identity of the enemy jet's pilot.
"Yeah, Commander, do you have this wacko or what?" asked another colleague of Ann's from Kat's Eye News, a tall, handsome and square-jawed reporter with neatly pomaded black hair.
Feral cleared his throat and jutted his considerable chin forward. "Ahem, well, due to the valiant efforts of my Enforcers, and some minor assistance from the SWAT Kats, the evildoer known as Morbulus won't be destroying any more refineries any time soon."
"You mean because this was the last one!" shouted a reporter with white hair and purple-tinted glasses, who'd shoved through the crowd suddenly. He was from Inside Megakat City, a less scruplous rival news organization of Kat's Eye News'.
"Who said that?!" growled Feral, his eyes burning and scanning the crowd.
The white-haired reporter made a sound and vanished back into the anonymity of the group, and said nothing further.
"What about Morbulus?" asked the orange-haired reporter.
"Yeah, where is he?" pressed the black-haired one. "And what about the SWAT Kats? Where were they in all this?"
The talking and arguing went on as Feral was bombarded with questions. Callie however was left alone, thankfully. She didn't mind speaking to the press, but not so many at once. She loosened her tie a bit and stared down at Morbulus' empty clothing. She dearly hoped that that was the last Megakat City would see of that particular villain.
~*~
A ways down the beach, the sewer of the city emptied into the bay via a large drain pipe. A figure broke the surface of the water. Far from naked, Morbulus swam ashore wearing nothing but his underwear, which consisted of an undershirt and boxer shorts, and climbed up inside of the pipe. Turning, he looked at the burning refinery in the distance and the lights from all of the Enforcer vehicles and fire trucks. He laughed.
"I guess you could say I sure gave THEM the strip!" he said to no one in particular, laughing at his own joke. He made a fist and thumped his chest once triumphantly. "No way I'm gonna see the inside of a prison cell!"
Suddenly he heard a loud hiss echoing through the pipe behind him. Using his rear eyes, which widened in surprise, he saw a pair of glowing yellow eyes peering out from the darkness of the sewer behind him, burning like hot coals. A rasping voice issued forth from the blackness.
"I'll put you to much better ussse than that!" it hissed.
Morbulus gulped. "Wh-Who are you?" he said, still without turning around.
A figure became distinct in the gloom as it slowly emerged into the dim light. Short, thin and hunched over, it was a scrawny kat with green and bluish green striped fur and crazy black spiked hair, appearing to be naked save for a white coat that was at least three sizes too large for his thin frame. A long reptilian tail lashed slowly behind him as a long muzzle terminating in a spadelike chin poked up so that those yellow eyes could stare into the ones on the back of Morbulus' head. Morbulus thought the mysterious green kat looked weird, but who was he, a kat with a second pair of eyes in the back of his head, to judge?
"You can call me Viper!" the kat said. "DOCTOR Viper! And I've got big plansss for you. A form of... alternative employment, you might sssay..."
Morbulus suddenly wished he HAD been arrested after all.
~*~
Later that same evening, the SWAT Kats returned to their secret hangar beneath the Megakat City Salvage Yard. After the Turbokat rose up into the main area of the base on its hydraulic platform, T-Bone popped the canopy, and both he and Razor hopped out, taking off their helmets. Neither of them was in a particularly celebratory mood.
"That didn't go too well..." Razor said, depressed.
"Understatement of the year, right there," T-Bone agreed.
Not only had Morbulus somehow managed to get away, he'd had the last laugh thanks to his empty jet crashing into and completely destroying the Megakat Refinery. It made Razor feel like crud and he said so. They walked over to their lockers, tossing their helmets inside, and changed clothes from their flight suits to their mechanics' coveralls, removing their black masks to become Chance Furlong and Jake Clawson.
"We destroyed half the city trying to catch this guy and he still gets away from us," said Jake morosely.
He looked over at their wall of kill marks, wondering whether to add a stamp for Morbulus. Technically they'd won, considering they had, after all, defeated him. The fact he'd gotten away and the refinery had still ended up getting destroyed didn't undo this fact. Still, he thought, it would've been a little odd, and apparently Chance agreed with him, at least for the time being, because although the bigger kat walked over and picked up the rubber stamp and made as if he were going to add a mark for their latest outing, he hesitated, then, with a grimace, returned the stamp to the inkpad.
"C'mon, let's head back up to the greasepit and get a couple cans of milk."
They walked towards a ladder which led upwards, and climbed upward, opening the hatch at the top that accessed what could charitably be called the living room of the garage. Jake picked up the remote control for the TV but didn't turn it on yet. It was an older set they'd purchased at some pawn shop or other, so old and junky that without Jake's own modifications, which included the seemingly obligatory clothes hanger antenna, the thing would've been incapable of picking up any signals from the city.
"Gonna see what they have to say about it on the news," he explained as Chance got a couple of milk cans out of the fridge, tossing one to him as he came over. Jake caught it. "Nothing good, probably. Personally, I'd give us a three outta ten..."
"Are you gonna mope like this all night?" Chance angrily demanded to know. "So that guy got away. Big deal. We at least kicked his tail and gave 'im somethin' to think about before he crawled off to hide under whatever rock he crawled out of!"
Jake noticed his partner's confidence was returning. And while it was ordinarily highly infectious, the thinner mechanic merely shook his head sadly and sighed, not replying. Chance chuckled and put a beefy arm around Jake's narrow shoulders, hugging his buddy close.
"He'll think twice before he tries tanglin' with the SWAT Kats again, huh?"
"I guess you're right," Jake admitted after a moment. This seemed to satisfy Chance. "Anyway, let's see what Kat's Eye News has to say about it."
He turned the TV on and flipped through the channels until he caught sight of Commander Feral. It was currently muted. The Kat's Eye News logo was superimposed in the lower corner of the screen. In the background, crews of fire fighters could be seen attempting to douse the flames of the still-burning Megakat Refinery. Jake felt his guilt threatening to return, but then he saw the message "Recorded Earlier" blinking on and off. Good. It wasn't live. Thise fire crews surely had the refinery put out by now, he hoped.
He hated causing unintentional damage. It made him feel sloppy and careless. And worse, it got people hurt. He reminded himself these were early days for them in their new careers as vigilantes. They'd make less mistakes as time went on, and tonight's embarrassment of an aerial showdown with Morbulus wouldn't be repeated again.
"Hey, there's Feral," said Chance, pointing with the hand holding his still unopened can of milk. "And he looks like he hasn't hit the litterbox for a week!"
Jake shook his head, leaving that charming little observation uncommented upon, and turned the volume up with the remote. A short Kat's Eye News' reporter with orange hair was currently the one interviewing Feral. He faced the camera while Feral loomed behind him looking impatient and, yes, even a little constipated, Jake had to admit, and found himself chuckling a little.
"I'm here with Commander Feral, who says that the so-called 'refinery reign of terror' is over at last," the reporter was explaining to viewers who'd just tuned in. Turning, he held his microphone out for the Enforcer Commander to speak into.
"Yes," said Feral. "The villain known as Morbulus was defeated by the SWAT Kats, but at great cost. They destroyed the Megakat Refinery and even caused structural damage to City Hall in the process!"
"And what about Morbulus?" asked the reporter. "The question on everyone's mind is do you have him in custody?"
"Ha!" Feral said, but it wasn't a laugh. More of an exclamation of something like disgruntled amusement and resigned black humor, the sound of a kat who the universe dumped on regularly. Feral was probably the most cynical person living in Megakat City, Jake reasoned. Due to the interference of the SWAT Kats, THIS is all we have of Morbulus at the moment!"
He held up Morbulus' empty clothes for emphasis. So he really had gotten away, Jake realized, feeling lousier than ever. Chance growled, squeezing his milk can. Beside him, Jake became mildly worried that his partner was going to give himself an aneurysm or something.
"Why, that lousy..."
"Chance, calm down," Jake urged gently.
But as if intent on continuing to provoke his former subordinate through the previously recorded footage, Feral's rant continued unabated. "No one asked for their help, and they allowed a dangerous criminal to escape! Even if they mean well, surely they could be more careful! But they're aren't! They're reckless and irresponsible, and--"
He got no further because Chance suddenly hurled his can at the screen. The force of its impact shattered it. Jake, shocked, covered his eyes as sparks and little bits of glass flew everywhere. When he uncovered his eyes and looked, the TV sat there with a big hole where the screen used to be. Thin tendrils of smoke snaked up out of it, and the stench of burned rubber and wiring filled the room.
"Chance!" cried Jake, appalled at his friend's temper. "What in the heck did you do that for?"
"Sorry about that, Jake..." Chance said, looking suddenly chastened. "I..." He struggled for words. "I just lost it there for a second. That jerk Feral really ticks me off sometimes."
"Well, the feeling's mutual, I'm sure," Jake said, sighing and tossing the now useless remote aside. "Well, Morbulus is gone, and so's the TV."
"Aw, can't you fix it?" Chance asked.
"I can try. No promises. But it'll take a while." A smirk came over Jake's features, as he knew just how to get Chance back for losing his temper like that and busting the TV. "Too bad," he said with an air casual, feigned sadness. "There was gonna be an all-night Scaredy-Kat marathon on tonight. Darn shame."
Chance looked stunned and extremely disappointed.
~*~
Morbulus, still in his underwear, had accompanied his "new friend" Dr. Viper through the sewers and into the depths of Megakat Swamp, into a particularly polluted and vile area known locally as the Dead Forest. He didn't like it one bit, a name like that. The Dead Forest was a nasty, muddy, slimy, revolting place and stank to high heaven. Alligators, snakes, rats and other unpleasant creatures slithered around. He almost preferred the sewer to this fog-enshrouded wasteland. But Morbulus' host seemed right at home here.
Viper wasn't exactly a font of conversation, and the two proceeded towards a gigantic, twisted tree in the middle of it all, with windows through which orange light could be seen shining. After entering, the two went into what could've only be the half kat, half snake biochemist's secret lab.
"Welcome," he said, "to my sssecret lab. It'sss quite the 'eyeful,' wouldn't you sssay?"
Viper picked up a remote and turned on a TV set suspended above his worktable. The two stood side by side watching the Kat's Eye News report about Morbulus' defeat. Onscreen, Commander Feral, with "Recorded Earlier" blinking on and off underneath him, was being interviewed by a reporter and was wringing his swagger stick as he talked.
"...and then when I finally get my hands on those two, I'm gonna--"
"Uh, sorry, Commander, but we've run out of time!" the reporter said hastily, as though suddenly desperate to end the Commander's rant as quickly as possible. "From the Megakat Refinery, this is Tom Katz, Kat's Eye News."
The camera view wobbled a bit, and Feral, apparently not liking being cut off, pushed past Katz and took a few threatening steps towards whoever was filming. "Hey!" he yelled. "Come back here, I'm not done yet...!"
The image of Feral's enormous hand reaching for the camera froze and pulled back to occupy the upper righthand corner of a news studio where a handsome male newscaster sat behind a desk. "Thanks, Tom," the newscaster said. "That was recorded earlier at the scene of the Megakat Refinery, and as you can well imagine, the rest of our own Commander Feral's rant against the SWAT Kats was... unfit for broadcast."
Cackling, Viper clicked off the TV and set the remote down on the worktable. "It ssseems we agree with Commander Feral on one thing, don't we, Morbulusss? Thossse SWAT Katsss are quite a bother, aren't they?"
"Yeah," said Morbulus, still a little uncomfortable being around this crazy-haired, snake-tailed weirdo, but warming up to him gradually as they found some common ground. "They made me a laughing stock today. I'd sure like to pound their smug faces in!"
He punched his fist into his open palm to illustrate. Viper didn't say anything. So much for conversation, Morbulus though, and then, after a short pause, his curiosity got the better of him and he looked over Viper's worktable.
It was covered with a variety of beakers, flasks and retorts, all filled with various insidious concoctions, many bubbling over bunsen burners. Morbulus recognized some of the paraphernalia from his high school chemistry classes, and picked up a flask from the table, examining it.
"Pretty impressive setup ya got here, Doc," he observed, "Looks like you've got everything a mad scientist could ever need right here."
He wondered if he'd spoken too soon, but surprisingly, Viper didn't seem to take offense at being called a mad scientist. "Everything except for... Katalyssst 99!" he corrected his guest.
Morbulus had never heard of it. "Katalyst 99? What's that?"
"A rare biochemical compound I require," the scientist explained. "It can only be found in Megakat Biochemical Labsss."
Now that place even Morbulus had heard of. A nigh-impregnable fortress of a facility that was supposed to be impossible to get into. Viper was crazy if he thought he was gettin' in. Still holding the flask, Morbulus said, "Good luck. That place is supposed to be impenetrable."
"Ah," said Viper, walking over and grabbing the flask away from him, making him jump, "we sssee 'eye to eye' Morbulusss."
Making a point of narrowing his rear set of eyes so that Viper couldn't see that he didn't appreciate the eye puns, Morbulus, suddenly interested, and remembering what Viper had said about alternative employment, said, "What? You got a plan for gettin' in?"
Viper turned and walked back to his worktable. "You might sssay that."
Setting the flask down, Viper picked up a small glass dish containing a purple liquid. Morbulus had noticed it before among the other items on the table, but it'd seemed of no more importance than anything else. Using an eyedropper, Viper sucked all of the purplish liquid up, then, smirking, he turned and walked back over to Morbulus. Morbulus frowned, taking a step back, suddenly not liking this one bit. He raised an arm as though to shove the scientist away if he needed to, only for Viper to use the eyedropper to put a drop of the purple stuff onto Morbulus' bare forearm.
What the...? What was this crud? It stung! Morbulus blinked with his front set of eyes and watched, first in agitation and then shock as the drop of liquid fizzed up into a foaming mess that quickly covered his whole arm, and with it, the pain spread, too. Instantly, his arm started to change underneath the foam, softening and becoming thick, purple and gooey.
"Nooooo!" Morbulus cried, backing up as the bubbling purple goo spread over his frame like a disease, and in seconds everything but his head had been changed, transformed into the purple vileness Viper had put on him. He winced, scrunching up both sets of eyes as his body was lit afire in pain.
"Yesss!" Viper hissed in what could only be described as a kind of sick pleasure.
"What did you do to me?!" Morbulus demanded.
"I'm sssimply turning you into my new mutant bacteria monssster!" Viper replied as if it were the most normal thing in the entire world.
Morbulus' head began to change now, too, becoming lumpy, and, as he felt the indescribably odd sensation of his rear eyeballs moving around the sides of his head to join the front ones in a row on his face, robbing him of his ability to see behind himself as he had since birth, his already thick body became even thicker, the churning purple slime swelling outwards to make him grow larger and larger, stretching and finally tearing his underwear apart at the seams.
Oh, no, why did I trust him? Morbulus' panicked and increasingly fragmented mind wondered franatically. Now I'm done for! His thoughts became fuzzy and simpler as the ghastly transformation continued. His pain and terror, his anger at Viper for having done this terrible thing to him, were replaced by a new sensation. Hungry! he thought. I'm hungry. Must eat. Eat! MUST EAT! Food, food, foooooddd! Soon that was all that occupied his increasingly less and less katlike mind. The single driving thought to FEED.
Viper rubbed his hands together in fiendish glee as he watched the hulking purple form that used to be Morbulus swelling in size, growing bigger and bigger, casting frightening and ever-changing shadows over him. He licked his lips.
"Yesss, my friend," he cooed. "You look ssso much nicer thisss way! Everyone will in my Megassswamp City! I said I had big plansss for you, and I ssspoke true! "
He walked up to the oozing, vaguely kat-shaped hulk. His new bacteria monster. "You're hungry, aren't you? I can tell! Well, don't worry, I'll feed you! Sssoon, yesss... very sssoon! With your help, I'll sssoon have Katalyssst 99 in my coilsss, and the power to permanently change thisss foul city into sssomething truly beautiful, and dessstroy the SWAT Katsss forever!"
Viper's high-pitched, wicked laughter carried out over the Dead Forest...
~*~
The sun was just beginning to rise over the city the following morning, giving the skies a blood red hue that boded ill. As the old saying went, "red sky at morning, sailor take warning."
Callie Briggs, feeling more than a little tired from having stayed up late to hold Mayor Manx's hand and walk him through writing his speech, her engine making an annoying clonking noise, drove along the two-lane blacktop leading to the Megakat City Salvage Yard, turning in and pulling up to the garage owned by Chance and Jake. The green sedan's gront end looked more than a little beaten up: scorched, missing its bumper, one headlight broken and the hood slightly crumpled. Damaged sustained during the explosion the other evening, and the reason for her visit to her friends.
She slowed and honked her horn, prompting Chance to come outside, looking a little groggy, but his expression brightened visibly when he saw who their early morning customer was, although his enthusiasm was dampened somewhat when he saw the state of the car. Cutting the motor off, Callie got out.
"Hi, Chance," she said conversationally.
"Hi..." Chance replied, staring at the mess that was the front end of the green car. He looked up at her. "What happened to your car?!" he cried, doing his best to sound shocked. He already knew, or at least he had a pretty good idea, but he had to maintain the illusion that he didn't.
"Oh, I was over at the Megakat Refinery when it exploded. A piece of debris hit it."
That'd been what Chance was afraid of, and felt instantly guilty, but then regained his composure, offering a flirtatious smile. "What were you doing way out there, Callie?" he asked.
The Deputy Mayor smiled. "Didn't you guys hear?" she gushed. "The SWAT Kats defeated Morbulus! You know, the one who was bombing all the refineries?"
"Ah..." Chance said in mock surprise, busying himself with stooping down to inspect the car.
"Yeah, we heard," said a voice from inside. "When we had a TV."
Callie turned and noticed Jake was inside the garage, with a television taken apart and spread out before him on the workbench, where he'd pulled an all-nighter attempting, without success, to repair the TV set from the ravages of Chance's wrath. The television itself, an empty shell, sat amidst all the items as he attempted to repair the damaged inner bits. Jake shot a reproachful look at Chance, who merely waved his hand at him to get him to hush and stood up, turning back to Callie.
"Anyway, I wanted you guys take a look at the engine and maybe fix it up for me," Callie said. "I don't care about it looks so much as whether it drives, and the engine started making this funny kind of pinging noise all the way back from Megakat Bay. And this morning the 'ping' turned into a 'clonk,' and, well, I wanna nip this in the bud so I'm not caught on the side of the road somewhere having to call you guys to come tow me."
"Sure thing," said Chance as Callie handed him her keys. "We'll probably have it ready in just a couple of days." He smirked as an idea crossed his mind. "Want me to give you a ride back into town in the tow truck?"
So saying, he gave the tow truck's fender an affectionate pat. No sooner were those words out of his mouth than they heard a horn honking. The long white limousine belonging to Mayor Manx pulled in and slid to a halt, the uniformed chauffeur getting out to open the door for Callie. Manx wasn't in it. Callie smiled apologetically at Chance, touched by his offer, but unable to say no to the creature comforts of a stretched luxury limo.
"No need," she said. "I AM the Deputy Mayor, after all. But thanks anyway, Chance."
Doing his best not to look disappointed and giving something that resembled a smile, Chance watched her turn and walk towards the limo. He sauntered back into the garage where Jake was, chest all puffed up. As far as he was concerned, the Deputy Mayor had all but asked him out on a date. Jake stood up from his work on TV.
"Heh," chuckled Chance, "she's crazy about me."
Callie heard that. She grinned, stopping and turning to glance back at the two. That Chance! she thought. She liked him enough, but he could be a little too overconfident at times, and in an effort to deflate his ego a little, she gave a sultry wave, not to him, but Jake, and said, "Bye, Jaaaaake," all sexy-like before continuing on to the limo.
Chance stood there as she got into the limo and drove off, eyes wide and mouth agape shock at that. "Bye Jake?" What the heck?! Jake, for his part, just smiled. The bigger kat turned and glowered at him as the limo drove off, balling up a fist as if to playfully punch Jake's shoulder, but he held back, not intent on picking a fight over something so trivial, he inquired after the dismantled television. After all, it took him a minute to get over himself, but it was obvious to Chance that Callie just said goodbye to Jake like that to make him jealous and poke a hole in the slightly overinflated balloon that was his ego. He needed that sometimes. It kept his feet firmly rooted on the ground, which he supposed even a pilot needed someones. Metaphorically, anyway.
"So, how 'bout the TV...?" he asked hopefully. He had no illusions about catching that Scaredy-Kat marathon now, but he wanted to at least be able to watch TV sometime during the next century.
"Nada," was Jake's reply after picking up and examining some random, broken bit of the appliance's innards. So saying, he threw it aside with a flick of his wrist to clatter noisily among the other TV parts. "The thing's history."
"What?!" cried Chance.
"Yeah," said Jake, "it's amazing how much damage one unopened can of milk can do!" He meant it, too. He wasn't just trying to needle his pal for breaking the thing. He really was surprised that the damage Chance and his milk can had done had really spelled total and complete doom for the faithful old TV.
"Crud," the other kat said, and repressed an urge to shove the gutted television over. Temper, Chance, he reminded himself. Calming, he said, "Well, we'll just have to get a new one!"
"With what money...?" asked Jake.
"Well-" Chance began.
"Hey, looooooovebirds!" a raspy, high-pitched and frankly whiny voice broke in.
Chance cringed. Oh no, he thought. Murray. He hated that voice. Both he and Jake turned and looked over at Murray and his brother standing there laughing at them.
"What do you guys want?" Chance asked. He usually did the talking whenever he and Jake dealt with these two. Jake preferred not to lower himself intellectually to acknowledge them most of the time. "We're buys."
"Yeah," sneered Burke, Murray's younger but much, much larger brother, "we saw ya. Flirtin' with da Deputy Mayor!" He clasped his gloved hands together and pretended to swoon, affecting a feminine high pitch to his voice. "'Oooooh, Chaaaance!'" he mocked, doing a very poor imitation of Callie Briggs indeed. "'You're so big and manly, marry me now and give me a tongue-bath, baby!'"
Murray joined in, making kissing sounds and hugging Burke's considerable belly as his annoyed brother broke character and attempted to shove him off of himself. "'Mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah!'" he intoned, pretending to . "'Yeah, baby, give the Chance-inator a big ol' smooch, babycakes!'" All things considered, he was doing a better imitation of Chance than Burke was of Callie.
Burke grumbled, "Get off! Stop it!" and shoved Murray off, where the smaller kat rolled around in the dirt laughing and squealing like a dying hyena. Jake rolled his eyes. He never understood why these two thought themselves SO funny.
Chance almost walked over and decked them. Instead, since the phrase for today was "even-tempered," lest he repeat the Great TV Incident, only this time with Murray's face, Chance merely demanded, "I said, what do you guys want? Don't you have some house to go haunt?"
After they finally stopped laughing, Murray picked himself up and dusted himself off. "We just wanted to let you two sweethearts know we was headin' off to get some scrap and we was gonna be in town. We might grab a pizza."
"A pizza for breakfast?" asked Chance.
"Donuts, then!" Murray said, throwing his hands up. "Look, that's not the point! Ya want anythin'? Besides a scrap heap sandwich, I mean?"
Burke snorted with laughter. For all their jackassery, the brothers occasionally attempted to be genuinely friendly with the two mechanics, but they couldn't do it without also injecting their usual cruelty and meanness into it. It was as though they just couldn't be completely nice to anyone, even each other. Jake politely declined the offer, as he always did. Not that he didn't appreciate the rare times when Burke and Murray were friendly. He was just concerned that the temptation to spit in their food would be too great for them to resist.
"No thanks," he said.
"Yeah, but you guys get whatever, y'know..." added Chance.
"Eh, fine!" Murray said. "Just a waste of good donuts anyway. C'mon, Burke."
The two waved goodbye and trudged off to their truck.
"Those two..." said Jake, "I just don't get them."
"Me neither," said his friend. "So..." He walked over to Callie's car and popped the hood. "Whaddaya say we give this baby a looksee?" After examining the engine for a moment, he seemed satisfied it wasn't anything he couldn't repair, and possibly even improve!
Jake noticed that look in his friend's eyes. "Chance, remember, she just wants the engine runnin' smooth again..." he gently warned him.
"Yeah, but who said it couldn't run twice as good as before?" asked Chance, shutting the hood.
"What did you have in mind?" Jake asked, already a little exasperated, knowing there was no way of averting disaster now.
"Help me get this baby into the garage and I'll show ya!"
~*~
Tom, a tall farmer, was in a field on the far side of his barn, tossing hay into the back of his pickup truck with his pitchfork, which he'd been doing since sunup.
His farm was one of the smaller ones, and abutted the marshlands which signaled the beginning of Megakat Swamp. Unlike a few of his more superstitious neighbors, Tom liked the swamp, having had an affinity for alligators, snakes and toads ever since he was a boy. Everyone else dreaded it and avoided it. He knew why and thought it was a load of nonsense.
Dr. Viper, indeed! He was supposed to be some kind of half kat, half snake undead ghoul or something. Tom the farmer had never heard such ridiculous gobbledygook in all his life! He was content to consign the ghoulish doctor to the urban legend pile and go about his business, unafraid of the swamp.
"Whew!" he said, taking a breather, "this jobs bigger'n I thought!"
In front of the barn, out of Tom's line of sight, Clementine the cow was grazing peacefully. Suddenly, a shadow fell over her. She looked up and let out a moo of fear.
Tom was about to resume work when he heard the sounds of a frantic struggle and weird, disgusting slimy sounds. Despite his growing unease, he decided he had to go investigate, especially when the mooing ceased abruptly and the schlurking noises got louder. Pitchfork in hand, he came around the side of the barn.
"What's goin' over here?!" he demanded.
He stopped, gasping as he could now see the front of the barn, and with it, the weirdest-looking creature he'd ever seen. The thing was twelve feet tall, a hulking purple mass vaguely shaped like a kat with thick legs and big, flat feet and arms terminating in hands with thick, gooey fingers.
It had what could charitably be called a head, with four blazing yellow eyes in front, all lined up in a row. Underneath that and something that passed for a nose, a great, wide, gaping black maw opened, with thick strands of purple goo connecting its upper and lower "lips." The hideous mouth was curled into the widest, evilest smile Tom had ever seen.
Clementine's tail hung from that big, grinning maw, and Tom backed away as the creature slurped the cow's tail up like a noodle. He raised his pitchfork threateningly. The thing stepped toward him anyway. He jabbed at the creature with his pitchfork to no effect.
"Stay back!" he said. "G-Get away!"
"I'll teach you not to meddle with my creation!" a voice hissed, and then Tom felt a a sudden crushing constriction around his waist. He felt himself get lifted up as if he weighed nothing whatsoever.
As he lurched and swayed in midair, he looked down to see a striped green snake tail encircling his middle. Looking over his shoulder, he gasped aloud as he beheld a green-furred kat wearing a white coat. Dr. Viper! It was true! All the stories were true!
Viper beckoned with a finger towards the purple bacteria monster that had once been Morbulus. Using his tail, he held the struggling farmer up to it.
"Nooo...!" Tom wailed, realizing his fate.
With an indifferent flick of his tail, Dr. Viper tossed Tom screaming into the hideous, grinning maw which closed over him and ate him in one gulp, pitchfork and all. Viper watched his creation eat. He loved the look of extreme satisfaction on its face. But playtime was over. He had a timetable to adhere to and there was no room for screwups. He just hoped the thing could follow directions more complicated than "go here" and "eat this."
"Now that you've had your breakfassst, it's time we went into Megakat City!" he said. The monster stared down at him, apparently without comprehending, prompting him to elaborate, "Follow me! There'll be lotsss more for you to eat there!"
Gesturing for the creature to follow, he turned and walked toward a sewage drain pipe just across the road from the farm, their ticket to getting into Megakat City unseen. The bacteria monster hesitated for a moment as if unsure or unwilling to follow, as though some of Morbulus' mind remained, enough that it didn't find obeying its master all too appealing, but the promise of more food got it moving and it finally lumbered after him.
~*~
Jake stood holding what appeared to be a slightly modified sparkplug in up to the light, one of about a dozen he and Chance had just gotten done installing into the engine of Callie Briggs' banged up car, following some more ordinary repairs and refinements. The car sat with its hood lifted up in the garage, and Chance had finished putting the last of the "turboplugs" into the engine.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Jake said. Not that he was confident he could persuade Chance of this. He was merely noting his objection for the record.
The turboplugs were new inventions of his, so new they were more or less untested. The idea behind them was that they'd grant extra power and longevity to any engine they were installed in. He'd been planning to install them in the Turbokat, but Chance had insisted they use them on Callie's car instead. Jake had reluctantly agreed, despite continuing to voice a token protest here and there. His reasoning? With the thing already busted from the other day, there wasn't much else they could do to the poor thing when Chance's idea inevitably failed.
"Relax!" Chance said, walking around and opening the door. He slid into the driver's seat, but left the door open so he could talk to Jake. "Callie should have extra horsepower, y'know, in case of an emergency."
Jake didn't disagree. "But these things are designed to go in jet engines!" he protested. "Who knows what they'll do to an ordinary car engine like this!"
"Jaaaaake," Chance said in that smooth way of his, leaning back in the seat with one hand carressing the steering wheel, like he was about to go cruising. "I'm a professional. I know what an engine can handle."
"I'm tellin' ya, you're gonna blow it..." Jake said, pocketing the spare plug he'd been examining, wondering why Chance couldn't get it into his head that car engines were different from jet engines.
Chance inserted the key in the ignition and fired it up. The vehicle roared to life deafeningly. "See?" Chance pointed out, feeling vindicated. "Purrs like a kitten!" He stepped on the accelerator, revving the engine powerfully. "Growls like a tiger!" he added.
But something about the noise the engine was making didn't sound quite right to Jake. He already tell the turboplugs were overloading Callie's engine even as Chance boasted about purring and growling, and, franatic to avert utter disaster, Jake grabbed the toolbox and got underneath the hood in an ultimately doomed effort to remove some of the plugs before-
BLAM!
Smoke poured in thick, noxious waves from the now completely blown out engine. Chance bit his lower lip sheepishly and after a second turned the ignition off. Getting out, he walked to Jake who slid out from under the hood, his face blackened and his fur slightly singed. The one turboplug he'd managed to remove he held smoking in his hand. It was partially melted.
"Great idea, Chance," he said with a sigh. He threw the now useless plug away. "NOW what'll we tell Callie? 'Sorry, Ms. Briggs, we know you brought your car in to get fixed but we broke it even more?'"
Waving the smoke away and coughing a bit, Chance said, "Eh, I dunno, I'll thinking of somethin'..."
Just then, they heard the blaring honk of a truck horn, followed by the "beep-beep-beep" of heavy machinery backing up. Just what they needed. Burke and Murray were back. Wiping his face off, Jake joined Chance and they went out to meet their least favorite kats in the world. Burke and Murray's filthy, noisy dump truck sat idling with its back end pointed at the garage, filled to overflowing with the junk and garbage the two had collected that morning.
Murray leaned out the driver's side door, a half-eaten donut in his hand. "Got a special delivery for ya! Hit it, Burke!"
The tipper portion of the truck then tilted back and uncermoniously dumped the gigantic pile of scrap all over the ground in front of the garage. Burke and Murray laughed as Chance and Jake walked up to stand beside the vehicle, awaiting the inevitable delivery notice. After the brothers had gotten done making fun of them again, of course.
"Man, this makes my day!" Murray said and crammed the rest of his donut into his mouth.
"Yeah," agreed Burke, visible over his brother's shoulder. It was amazing he was able to cram himself into the cab. "They come a long way from bein' pilots!"
The same old schtick. Here it came...
"A loooong way..." Murray said with his mouth full, then pointed down at the ground, "down!"
Didn't they have any original material? wondered Chance.
He laughed, then suddenly choked on the mouthful of donut, gagging, and lurched back and forth in the seat, eyes bulging. Despite hating his freaking guts, a wide-eyed Chance, on pure instinct, was about to throw open the door, drag the little jerk out and give him the Heimlich when Burke came to the rescue, thwacking Murray on the back violently with his palm, causing the shorter kat to wharf up the throat-clogging mass of chewed up donut. It splattered on the dashboard. Ick, thought Chance, and stood back, his hatred of Murray renewed now that he was okay.
"Thanks, Burke," Murray wheezed, and indifferently waved Chance and Jake away. "I'm fine, I"m fine..." He coughed a few more times and then his moment of vulnerability passed and he was back to laughing. He leaned out, handing Chance a clipboard with the delivery form on it and a pencil that could've used sharpening, it looked like. "Sign here, sucker."
Chance did so, handing the clipboard back, but emphatically snapping the pencil in two with his thumb and forefinger. Murray frowned at that but didn't rise to the bait, instead just holding up a tin cup filled with identical pencils and jangling it mockingly. A few moments later, he threw a piece of paper out to them. Their copy of the delivery form. Chance didn't catch it and let it flutter to the ground at his feet.
"Well, boys, it's been a blast, but we gotta be gettin' back out on the road," Murray said. "Gotta report in to Commander Feral about his favorite Enforcer washouts!"
"We'll tell him you sent your loooove!" Burke sneered.
"Adios, amigos!" Murray jeered and floored it, the truck speeding off, kicking up a huge cloud of dust, leaving behind a seething Chance and Jake.
As the dust cleared, Chance and Jake were left standing there amid the pile of junk their "friends" had left for them. Chance shook his head. If Burke and Murray knew he and Jake used the very same stuff they dumped on what amounted to their front lawn all the time to modify an old fighter jet into the sleek, beautiful and deadly Turbokat, they'd have coughed up a hairball.
Standing with his hands on his hips, he narrowed his eyes at the departing truck. "'This makes my daaaaaaay,'" he said, making Jake laugh by doing a surprisingly good imitation of Murray. "Those two dipsticks! That donut almost did us a favor!"
Jake smiled and gave one of his friend's brawny biceps a good-natured punch. "Riiiiight," he said, "like you would've let 'him choke to death. I saw you going for the door." He winked.
Chance just shook his head. He supposed Jake was right, and not even Murray deserved such a humiliating death as choking on a donut. Besides, if he'd died, they'd have had to deal with a grieving Burke. And that thought didn't exactly fill Chance with joy. Turning towards the junk, he hitched up his belt over his stomach and kicked a bent piece of metal, sending it whizzing through the air to clang off of an automobile engine.
He walked over and stooped down, examining the engine. To his eye, it looked perfectly good. Not new, but otherwise in working order. "Hey, Jake," he said, grabbing it and grunting with the effort of lifting it from among the junk where it lay nestled, his biceps bulging through his shirt sleeves as though they'd spring the seams. He set it down at Jake's feet. "Take a look at this," he said. "We could put this baby under Callie's hood."
"Yeah, to replace the one you just exploded."
Chance's smile turned into a frown.
"But you're right," said Jake, getting down on his hands and knees to examine the engine more closely. "It looks like it's in pretty good shape."
"Why do you think someone threw it out...?" asked Chance.
"Dunno," Jake said, rising to one knee. "Probably just got replaced with a newer model."
"And they just pitched it?" the larger feline said, affecting astonishment. "What a waste!" He kneeled down beside his friend and gave the engine an affectionate pat. "Don't worry, we got a good hood to put you under."
"Without any modifications beyond basic repair," Jake warned, glowering.
Chance just grinned sheepishly, then Jake rose and returned to the junk pile. Here, he found what looked to him like a perfectly good TV set. An older model than the one Chance had busted the other day, but otherwise in decent condition. The longer he worked in a junkyard, the more Jake became amazed and dismayed at what people threw out. Picking it up, with much less effort than Chance had with the engine, thank goodness, he turned and lifted it above his head like the one foretold in the old legends of Megalith City holding the Dragon Sword aloft in triumph after removing it from the rock. Chance glanced up from where he was kneeling and blinked as the rising sun shined brilliantly behind the appliance his friend was holding up, and blinked.
"I found our new TV!" Jake said triumphantly.
~*~
The new park was a large expanse of green grass, trees and stone walkways. It was a sight to behold, a testament to the skills of the landscapers, but Callie Briggs was too annoyed to appreciate its beauty. She hid it well. She sighed as she stood alongside Mayor Manx as he addressed a meager crowd from a podium on a raised wooden platform, a pair of gold scissors in her hands.
Behind them was an enormous object covered by a white sheet. His new statue, the centerpiece of the park. The sheet was secured by a glossy red ribbon that awaited the scissors Callie held, but first Manx had to finish his speech.
The crowd gathered before them consisted almost exclusively of bleary-eyed reporters, Callie noted. There were a few gardeners and workmen here and there, but the ordinary everyday citizens of Megakat City, the people the park was ostensibly for, were conspicuously absent. Callie blamed the fact Mayor Manx had, against all reason, chosen to schedule the unveiling of his statue so early in the morning.
She really wished she were anywhere but here. As Deputy Mayor, she had more important things to attend to, but whatever His Honor considered worth his time, he clearly thought was worth her time as well, so she grinned and suffered through Manx's murder of the speech she'd helped him write. Callie considered herself a decent speechwriter, but no matter what she gave Manx to read, he managed to screw it up. He mispronounced words, his incompetence as an orator matched only by his enthusiasm for the matter at hand.
"...and so, as Mayor of Megakat City," he said, mercifully bringing the speech to a close, "I am proud open to the public the brand-new park that bears my name!" He turned to Callie standing nearby and said, "Callie?"
This was her cue. She came forward and handed him the scissors. Grinning, he walked over to the big thing covered by the sheet and posed for one of the reporters, the short, orange-haired one, to snap a photograph of him poised to cut the ribbon. Flash! The moment immortalized for posterity, Manx snipped the ribbon and the sheet fell away to reveal the crime against art some poor sculptor had slaved away on for weeks, a huge statue of the Mayor himself some fifteen feet tall.
There was halfhearted applause from the assembled reporters. Among them, Callie could see Ann Gora and her cameraman.
"Well, now, isn't he modest," Ann Gora said dryly to another reporter, just loud enough for Callie to overhear. The other reporter stifled a chuckle. Then, putting her game face on, Ann turned towards Jonny, smiling the most convincing yet utterly insincere smile imaginable, and said into the camera, "So far, the openeing ceremony for the new Manx Municipal Park has gone well..."
~*~
Dr. Viper moved through a sewer tunnel, his tail lashing along behind him as he ambled leisurely through ankle-deep water. The bacteria monster walked along behind him, its enormous, gooey feet making squishing sounds in the fetid water, the fluorescent lights affixed to the walls casting its shadow over the scientist. It'd grown in size since eating the farmer and his cow, so that it barely fit in the tunnel despite its high ceiling.
They were nearing their destination. Viper could sense it. No one knew the sewers of Megakat City better than he. "Not long now!" he said gleefully, rubbing his hands together. "It'sss just up around-"
He stopped short as he realized he wasn't in the monster's shadow anymore. It'd stopped somewhere behind him. Turning, he saw the creature standing there staring with its four eyes up towards a manhole cover directly above them. If Viper was correct, they were directly beneath where they were building that new park. He could hear the muffled sounds of a crowd. Apparently, the bacteria monster did too.
Impatient, he snarled, "Don't ssstop now!" The bacteria monster didn't listen and reached up towards the hole. Viper was finding the creature difficult to control. He supposed it was due to what little remained of Morbulus' mind, being defiant to the end. "Lisssten to me when I'm talking to you!" he yelled, furious.
This wasn't good, he thought. This was going to delay the robbery and set Viper's schedule back by at least twenty or thirty minutes, time he couldn't afford to lose!
"Come back!" he shrieked, but it was no use. The monster sensed food nearby, and it was going for it, no matter what its creator said or did.
~*~
In the garage, Chance and Jake were under the open hood of Callie's car putting the finishing touches on the refurbished engine they'd just installed. Their "new" TV, which Jake had gotten working with a minimum of fuss, sat on the worktable nearby, showing the park dedication. Ann Gora was giving a report, but Chance wasn't paying attention to her; he was smiling at Deputy Mayor Briggs, visible on the platform behind Ann in the background.
Pausing, he lay his cheek against the palm of one hand, propping his elbow against the car. "Boy," he said, dreamily, "that Callie sure is pretty..."
Jake, annoyed that his friend had stopped working, glanced up and said, "Yeah, but she'll be pretty MAD if we don't get her car working again!"
Getting the idea, Chance sighed and resumed work as Ann Gora continued her report. "The festivities are a big success," she was saying, "helping everyone take their minds off yesterday's bombings, and also-"
She was cut off by a deep, rumbling sound, making the two look up from their work.
"What was that?" said someone on TV.
"Jonny," Ann suddenly cried, "get a shot of that!"
The view whipped around and Chance and Jake saw an enormous, lumpy purple creature with four eyes emerging from the sewer through an open manhole. There were cries of "Holy kats!" and "Run for your lives!" The camera view began retreating as the wobbly image of the monster came closer. Someone, it sounded like Callie, screamed.
"What in the heck is that?!" cried Jake, surprised.
"It's ugly, that's what!" replied Chance.
They looked at another. They knew what they had to do. Duty called, and Callie's car was going to have to wait.
"Let's hit it!" they cried together.
~*~
Absolute panic ensued in the park as the bacteria monster emerged from the sewer. Cries of "Holy kats!" and "Run for your lives!" filled the air as the reporters and assembled spectators turned and ran off in all directions. At the podium, Manx and Callie recoiled in shock as the creature seemed to be lumbering straight towards them.
"Godfrey!" cried Manx. "Callie, it's a big purple sticky thing!"
He flew off the platform in a wild leap, tumbling in the grass as he held onto his toupee. Callie jumped down after him.
"Mayor, wait!" she yelled.
But Manx wasn't listening, Getting up, grass clippings clinging to his suit, he ran as fast as his short legs would carry him towards his limousine, where the chauffeur sat behind the wheel. Callie watched him go, then turned. The orange-haired reporter with the camera who'd been photographing them earlier ran past her and positioned himself by the Manx statue. Ann and Jonny had already made themselves scarce along with most of the rest of the press. Callie thought that he was either very brave or very stupid. Suddenly realizing that she wasn't running, either, Callie ran for the limo.
The reporter stood his ground, snapping photo after photo of the monster as he backed up. Flash! Flash!! Click-click-click! The camera clicked impotently and made a whirring noise as the film rewound. The reporter lowered it in fear as the bacteria monster loomed menacingly over him. With a gasp, he took off through some nearby bushes. As soon as he was out of the monster's sight, the creature lost interest in him, as though it struggled with object permanence. Out of the corner of its left two eyes, it saw Callie, though, and turned and began lumbering after her - and the white limo in the distance. The bacteria monster walked towards the limo. As it turned, it knocked the statue of Manx over. The statue crushed the wooden platform Manx and Callie had been standing on earlier.
She hurried down one of the park's stone pathways towards where the limo was waiting. But the driver wasn't; even as she caught up to the huffing and puffing Manx, their chauffeur was getting out. He took one look at the bacteria monster and fled with a scream. He left the driver's side door open. Please let the keys be in the ignition, Callie begged. She grabbed Manx's suit and shoved him the front seat, climbing in after him, getting behind the wheel and closing the door. Yes! The keys were in the ignition. Callie grabbed them and turned them. Vrrroooom! The engine roared to life.
Beside her, Manx wailed. "Callie! Get me out of here!"
"I'm working on it, Mayor!" she said, shifting the vehicle into drive and stepping on the gas.
The bacteria monster came over the rise of a small hill several yards away, smiling evilly. Manx screamed all manner of terrified gibberish. In addition to her fear and being distracted by her passenger's piercing shrieks of terror, Callie was unused to driving such a big, bulky vehicle as the long stretched luxury limousine, and so she quickly lost control of the car. She hit a curb, sideswiping a fire hydrant. Water gushed into the air as Callie struggled to regain control, spinning the wheel, the limo careening straight towards the monster; exactly where she didn't want to go! She regained control and slammed on the brakes, but not in time to avoid hitting the monster. The front end hit the bacteria in the middle. It grunted in pain and doubled over the hood, but recovered quickly, and, to Callie's horror, opened its huge mouth and began to eat the car! She and Manx watched the entire front end disappearing into the smiling black hole, darkness descending over the limo interior.
She had to act quickly. "Come on, Mayor," she urged Manx, "hurry!"
Manx needed no persuasion. He was getting off this sinking ship! Fortunately for both of them, Manx's limo lacked a partition between the front seats and the back passenger area. The two climbed hurriedly into the back, then were able to throw open one of the driver's side rear doors and leap free just as the bacteria monster wolfed down the entire length of the car in two quick bites. It immediately shuddered and started doubling in size right before their eyes as the mass of the devoured limo was added to its body. Getting to their feet, the two ran off again, around the bulk of the monster, heading back the way they came. Finished growing for now, the monster turned, saw them, and immediately gave chase, the need to feed overwhelming every other thought in what little remained of Morbulus' mind; even Dr. Viper's orders to assault Megakat Biochemical Labs were forgotten for the time being as the big, purple four-eyed mutation pursued the two morsels across the park.
The Turbokat roared into view and began to circle the park. The SWAT Kats looked down at the creature.
"Eew," said T-Bone, making a face, "that thing looks nasty!"
"Yeah, and it's closing in on Callie and the Mayor!
T-Bone looks where Razor points, to see the tiny figures of Manx and Callie running away from the Bacteria across the green grass of the park.
"But that's easily taken care of!" Razor said, flipping some switches on his weapons panel.
Hearing the approaching jet, the monster turned away from Callie and the Mayor, growling up at the Turbokat. Dim memories of its former life surfaced long enough for it to hate the jet instinctively on sight. The corners of its already sinister openmouthed grin turned up more sharply as thoughts of vengeance for a humiliating defeat the previous day came tantalizingly within its reach.
Razor targeted the monster right in the middle of its ugly face, between the two sets of glaring yellow eyes and hit the button marked "Plain Old Missile."
"Eat this, slimeball!"
Whoosh! A missile with "From Razor with Love!" stenciled along its length shot out from the Turbokat and rocket towards the monster, who stood there dumbly and took the head dead on. The missile hit and exploded, creating a huge cloud of smoke. The monster was obscured from the SWAT Kats' view, but they definitely heard its bellow of pain. Yes! thought Razor. Even if he hadn't killed it, he'd definitely wounded it, given it something to think about.
"Good work, buddy!" T-Bone, leaning his arm back, palm up, for a high-five that never came.
"Oh no!" cried Razor, his illusions of having harmed their adversary suddenly shattered as the smoke cleared. "Look!"
He and T-Bone were shocked to see, instead of one wounded monster, two smaller but otherwise perfectly fine monsters now, each with two eyes instead of four. The missile's impact had only caused the original creature to split apart. Right down the middle from the looks of things.
"Huh?" cried T-Bone. "Well that's something you don't see everyday..."
Below, both bacteria monsters continued to wear those huge, stupid but malicious-looking smiles, and each ones right eye was squinted slightly as though in intense concentration. The remnants of Morbulus' mind were fragmented, and both "new" monsters were struggling to remember what it was Dr. Viper had told them. Suddenly, out of the corner of its wide open left eye, one of them spotted the fleeing Callie and Manx, and remembered chasing them, and so it resumed doing that, plodding awkwardly in their direction.
As she and Manx fled from the two-eyed monster, Callie couldn't believe it. The thing had divided like a giant amoeba! Given that the original creature's eyes had been divided evenly among two new monsters, she hoped that four was the most of these things Megakat City would have to deal with. But even four unkillable eating machines that got bigger the more they consumed could pose a serious threat to the city. At least the two newly-created monsters were the same size as the original had been before it had eaten the limo. Callie just hoped one or both of them didn't divide again.
Suddenly, a rope ladder dropped down in front of Callie, and she became aware of whirring helicopter rotors. She looked up to see an Enforcer chopper hovering in the air. Two more were flying around nearby. Rescue was rescue, Callie thought, grabbing the ladder. Suddenly, with a yelp, Manx shoved her aside and climbed up ahead of her. As she lay sprawled in the grass, with the approaching monster coming closer, Callie's anger overcame her fear. You coward! she wanted to shout at Manx. As the monster's shadow fell over her, Callie got up and climbed the ladder, grateful that the chopper had waited for her. As soon as she was on, the aircraft rose in altitude, and just in time, too; one big, gooey purple hand reached out for Callie's dangling feet. She lifted her feet up and felt and heard the "whoosh" of air as it swiped at her.
Once inside, Callie had to resist the thankfully transient urge to throw the shaking and whimpering Manx out the open side door and right down the grinning maw of the monster below them. She composed herself. Safely out of harm's way, Manx brushed his suit free of grass clippings and coughed awkwardly. He didn't apologize or even try to justify what he'd done. Callie decided to let the matter drop for now. But the time for recriminations would come later. She wasn't going to let her employer forget what he'd done.
Up front, a helmeted Commander Feral sat in the co-pilot's seat, behind the weapons controls. A stony-faced Enforcer pilot Callie didn't recognize was flying the chopper.
"Don't worry, Mr. Mayor, the Enforcers are here!" Feral assured Manx. Apparently, he hadn't seen what Manx had done.
As one, the three choppers circled around towards the monsters.
"On my order, fire on those things," Feral said into the microphone attached to his flight helmet.
T-Bone's voice suddenly came over the radio. "I don't think that's a good idea, Feral."
"Get off this frequency, you vigilantes!" growled Feral. "The Enforcers are handling this!"
"No! He's right!" Callie said, sticking her head up front between Feral and his pilot.
Looking suddenly uncertain, Feral's pilot turned and opened his mouth to say something, but he was silenced by a glare from his commanding officer.
"I give the orders around here!" Feral said, glaring first at the pilot, then at Callie, as if to make it clear his words were a reminder to her as much as to his pilot.
"No," came Manx's voice from behind them, "I do! And I say fire on those things! Kill them!"
Great minds think alike, Callie thought. But at least Feral's refusal to listen was borne from stubborn pragmatism and a desire to prove the SWAT Kats wrong. Not exactly admirable qualities, but still better than Manx's unthinking cowardice. And Manx had seen with his own eyes the first creature split when the SWAT Kats hit it! She said nothing further, and decided to let Feral find out for himself the hard way that the SWAT Kats were right.
Growling, Feral targeted the foremost of the monsters, the one that had almost gotten her and Manx, and launched a missile. It hit the bacteria dead center in the face. Good aim, if nothing else, Callie thought. There was an explosion, but it was the same results as before. The smoke cleared, and where a squinting, two-eyed purple slime creature had stood, there now stood a pair of somewhat smaller creatures with one eye apiece.
"Uh!" Feral cried in surprise.
"Told you so!" said T-Bone's voice over the radio.
Ignoring him, Feral contacted the other two choppers who were with him. "All units, return to Headquarters. Normal weapons don't work against these things."
"You've made that abundantly clear, Feral!" grumbled Manx, apparently forgetting he'd been the one who had insisted Feral fire on the creature in the first place.
If Morbulus' mind had been seriously fragmented the first time the creature divided, it was now even moreso; almost nothing that could be called intelligence, even in the most rudimentary sense, remained in the two one-eyed monsters. But something finally stirred in the mind of the remaining two-eyed one, which had been standing unmoving over by where the original division had first occurred with nothing to stimulate it and distract it. It'd been thinking, or trying to, and trying hard, and finally something surfaced, and it wasn't the earlier, transient desire for revenge against the SWAT Kats for yesterday; Megakat Biochemical Labs, go to Megakat Biochemical Labs. Yes. Megakat Biochemical Labs.
Dr. Viper poked his spiky-haired head out of the still open manhole the original creature had emerged from. He grinned. How fortunes turned on a dime! He'd been angry when the original four-eyed monster had disobeyed him, but now things were looking up. He cackled, very pleased. "What an unexpected development! I never intended for the creaturesss to divide like real bacteria cellsss! Now thossse foolsss have given me three waysss to get what I want! Hahahaha!"
With a pleased hiss, he disappeared back down into the sewer as the two-eyed monster turned and lumbered out of the park. Seeing it go, one of the smaller, less intelligent one-eyed bacteria also turned and headed off after it, more for lack of anything better to do than because of any memory of Dr. Viper's orders. The third, meanwhile, left the park another way, completely uncoordinated and with no clear goal in mind beyond finding and eating whatever it could. Nobody had seen Viper. Commander Feral's chopper turned and followed the first two, while the Turbokat flew off in pursuit of the third.
After leaving the park, the big two-eyed bacteria monster and its smaller single-eyed companion lumbered down the city street which the two-eyed creature knew led to Megakat Biochemical Labs, which, indeed, it could see growing nearer in the distance. Yes, it thought. Megakat Biochemical Labs. Go to Megakat Biochemical Labs for Dr. Viper.
Commander Feral and Callie observed from the cockpit of the helicopter as it flew along behind them, matching their speed. "The SWAT Kats can keep an eye on the third, I imagine," said Feral, the closest Callie had ever heard him come to giving the SWAT Kats anything resembling credit.
Looking ahead, she saw Megakat Biochemical at the end of the block. "They seem to be headed in the direction of Megakat Biochemical Labs!"
Feral nodded. "Then that's where we're going," he said. "If anyone knows how to stop these things, they will!"
His pilot pushed the control yoke forward and the chopper sped up, overtaking the two slow-moving monsters and heading towards the fortified building in the distance with all speed.
~*~
Meanwhile, the SWAT Kats were indeed tailing the third bacteria monster. It lumbered around a building, out of sight. T-Bone put the Turbokat into hover mode and when he rounded the corner of the building, he blinked. The monster was gone!
"Where'd he go?" he said, looking around. "How can a giant walking pile of purple slop just vanish?!"
Also looking around, Razor saw a set of stone stairs leading down. A subway entrance. Fear and dread dawned on him. The subway. It went into the subway.
"Oh no," he cried, "he went into the subway!"
~*~
A single businessman in a white suit and black fedora waited on the Katalina Station platform, briefcase in hand. He yawned. He hoped the train wasn't late. He had an early meeting to get to. Hearing movement, he turned and cried out in surprise at the sight of the grinning cycloptic horror squeezing its pliant bulk through the subway entrance. It then meandered over onto the boarding platform. The businessman dropped his briefcase and ran. The bacteria monster ignored him in favor of stepping down off the platform and entering the subway tunnel, fortunately for him... and unfortunately for the arriving train he'd been waiting for.
Denny sat bleary-eyed in the motorman's cabin of the onrushing subway train's lead car. He hadn't gotten much sleep last night. They were a few minutes behind schedule like usual. He sighed. He'd worked as a motorman driving trains for the Megakat City Transit Authority for the past three years and he hated his job. The same old tunnels, day in, day out; nothing ever exciting happened.
He glanced over his shoulder. Through the rear window of the motorman's cabin he could observe some of the early morning commuters he'd picked up, something he could afford to do because it wasn't like there was any traffic for him to pay attention to. The car he was driving was packed almost to full capacity despite the early hour. It was very nearly standing room only.
A pretty young she-kat and an elderly man with glasses, frowning as he read about yesterdays bombings in the copy of the Megakat Times he had spread open before him were some of the few who'd managed to get seats. Others, including some college types with textbooks and an office worker in a suit with a turtleneck, carrying a stack of file folders and reports, weren't as lucky, struggling to hold on to their burdens one-handed as they gripped the straps dangling from the ceiling with their free hands. Nobody was talking much. Too early for conversation before the coffee kicked in.
He observed his conductor, Bud, exit the first car and pass through into the second, then turned and focused his attention back on the tracks stretching out before him. He sighed. Yup. Nothing exciting.
The second car was almost as packed as the first. Bud went through, checking things. Pushing his way through the standing passengers, he opened the door and entered the third and final car. This one wasn't as full as the other two. In fact, other than Bud, there were only four kats; a little boy with gray fur and curiously premature white hair wearing a baseball cap who was with his father, a curly-haired she-kat with the harried look of a housewife, and a businessman with a fedora and bowtie. The housewife had an armful of groceries from some early morning shopping at a 24 hour convenience store. The businessman was reading the same paper as the old man in the first car.
Bud knew that come that afternoon, this sparsely-popular train car would be packed just as tight as the first two.
"Can we go to the toy store, dad?" Zachary, the white-haired boy in the baseball cap was asking excitedly.
His father Bernard sighed, annoyed. He had to get some things at the office where he worked. And then he had to take little Zachary to the doctor's office for a checkup. And so early on his day off, too!
"We'll see, Zack," he said, managing a smile, trying not to let his annoyance spoil his son's good mood. Zachary didn't usually like going to the doctor, so him being so cheerful was a blessing. "It'll have to wait until after we're done at Dr. Hallen's. I don't think the toy stores are open this early."
"Awww, gee," whined Zachary.
In the lead car, Denny the motorman's life suddenly got a lot less boring. As the train rounded a bend coming up to the Katalina Station platform, he saw an enormous, purple... thing with one huge, glaring yellow eye an enormous, pitch black gaping maw come into view. It was blocking the way. His eyes flew wide open.
"What in the-?! Holy kats!" he cried.
He slammed on the brakes. The train's wheels left a shower of sparks as the speeding vehicle struggled to come to a stop, squealing loudly. In Denny's car, everyone held on. The passengers holding onto the hand straps dropped everything they were holding but managed to remain standing, while the seated passengers, including the she-kat and the elderly man, went flying forward onto the floor. The people in the second car were also thrown forward violently by the sudden stop. In the third car, conductor Bud, Zachary, his father, and the other two also went flying forwards towards the front. The housewife's groceries flew everywhere.
The train, wheels sparking as it ground to a halt, slammed into the bacteria monster, knocking it back a ways, before finally stopping. This did not seem to affect the creature. Without wasting time, the bacteria grabbed the first car and lifted it, causing it to disconnect from the second car. In the motorman's cabin, Denny watched in frozen horror as the grinning mouth yawned wide and darkness engulfed the interior of the train car, and he and all of his passengers screamed as the first car disappeared into the monstrous maw with them inside of it.
In three quick bites, the entire first car of the subway train, Denny the motorman and everyone else inside with him, were totally devoured, and the bacteria monster swelled in size. It belched, and grasping, slimy hands reached for the second car, where the passengers hadn't fully recovered from the jolting stop yet.
Inside, the startled passengers got knocked about as suddenly the lights went out and the entire care interior was plunged into darkness. A brief flash of illumination as the malfunctioning ceiling lights struggled to come back on revealed to the doomed commuters the terrible sight of the roof and walls bending inwards towards them as they all pressed themselves against the floor in a vain attempt to escape. Mercifully, the lights went out again. The screams abruptly stopped, replaced by the sounds of rending metal and breaking glass as the bacteria monster ate the second train car just as quickly as it had the first.
Up top, T-Bone swung the Turbokat around to get enough momentum, flying towards the subway entrance. When they were close enough, Razor shot out on the Cyclotron, driving along the bumpy stairs which led down. He rode the Cyclotron across the deserted boarding platform and flew off the edge, landing on the track and zooming off down the tunnel. He rounded the bend just in time to see the last of the second train car vanish into the monster's mouth as it grew, swelling in size as the car, and its doomed occupants, were digested and added to its mass. Soon it would be too big for the subway tunnel to contain it!
His eyes widened in horror at what he'd just witnessed. All those people on the train. "Oh no...!"
In the final train car, Zachary screamed as Bernard held him tightly, Bud the conductor and the other two passengers gibbering and screaming they got jostled around. The car was being lifted up. The bacteria monster had picked up the last remaining car from the train and was opening wide to eat it. No, thought Razor. No, you don't! He revved his engine and went flying at it. He drove past it, getting its attention, its single eye narrowing in annoyance at this distraction. It released the train car, dropping it back onto the track where it sat tilted at an awkward angle, nearly tipped onto its side.
Inside, the four passengers and the conductor lay terrified and unmoving but alive against the nearly sideways seats as the car lurched and swayed and slowly halted, then tilted back onto its wheels, righting itself, albeit off the track. They went to the windows and looked out.
"Look, Daddy, it's one of the SWAT Kats!" cried Zachary happily.
Razor zoomed back the way he came, past the creature, which was still too close to the train car for his liking. The monster made a lazy grab for him and missed, but made no attempt to pursue. Stopping, Razor popped a wheelie and spun, gritting his teeth in white hot fury at the terrible fate of the subway commuters, determined to save this final few aboard the last car. As the Cyclotron's front tire came back down to the ground, Razor revved his engine in rage.
"Come on!" he said through clenched teeth. "Come and get me, you giant zit!"
After a moment, it took the bait, moving towards him, its huge, grinning maw open wide to devour him whole.
The passengers in the last remaining subway train car looked out the windows as the one-eyed bacteria monster loomed menacingly over Razor. Razor revved the Cyclotron's engine. Vroom, vroom! He was beyond enraged.
"Come and get me!" he yelled.
The monster snarled, a nasty, a nasty, phlegmy sound. It clenched and unclenched its huge slimy purple hands as though in indecision, but if it was actually thinking anything, it wasn't immediately apparent. Its single eye simply glared with evil stupidiy, gaping maw curled into the same openmouthed smile as always. Razor popped a wheelie, turning in place, trying to do his best to look appetizing to the beast, intending on luring it away from the train car, to get it to chase him off down the subway tunnel, away from the few remaining kats he'd gotten there in time to save.
The front tire slammed back down onto the ground as the motorcycle completed its turned and he revved the engine again. Vroom! "You're hungry, aren't you? Some dessert after a sub sandwich, you big pile of crud?!"
Hungry. Yes. Dim memories of being promised food prompted the creature into action. The bacteria monster loosed a hideous bellow and lunged forwards with arms outstretched to grab Razor, who hunched his shoulders down in preparation to spin and zoom off, when suddenly the monster's eyebrow flew up, eye going wide and bulging outwards, mouth opening wider in a pained roar as electricity shot through its body.
Razor jerked back in his seat in surprise, then realized what happened. In taking a step forward to attack him, the monster had stepped on the electrified third rail of the track. The bacteria convulsed wildly, roaring. Blinding bright flashes of light played over Razor, who shielded his face with his forearm. In the train car, the passengers ducked down, screaming.
The monster squeezed its eye shut in agony as the sparking arcs of bluish electricity crackling over its form turned it an unsightly brownish color. After a moment, the electrical discharged fizzled out, and the now brown bacteria monster stood frozen in mid-contortion, eye shut, mouth open in a silent but smiling scream. It'd been burned to nothing but a dried up husk. The unmoving form twitched and then slowly crumbled to dust before Razor's eyes.
"What the-?"
He stared uncomprehending over his forearm at at the shapeless pile of dust that used to be the monstrous germ creature, then lowered his arm and stroked his chin in thought. Electricity. Heat. Newfound hope filled him. He'd found a way to kill the creatures.
In the remaining car, the passengers and the conductor slowly poked their heads up into view one by one, in varying states of fear, confusion and relief. After a moment, they all began cheering.
"W-we're alive!" said the businessman in the fedora and bowtie.
"I've never so scared in all my life!" cried the frizzy-haired housewife.
"Thank you, SWAT Kat!" said the little boy, Zachary, being clutched happily by his father.
Razor looked over at them. "Is everyone okay in there?" he asked.
There were various shouts of response in the affirmative. Razor smiled, revving the engine again and launching himself back down the tunnel and onto the boarding platform. As he zoomed away, the passengers cheered him.
Razor flew out of the subway entrance on the Cyclotron, skidding to a stop in the street. Reaching up, he activated his helmet's comlink.
"T-Bone?" he said. "Are you there?"
Above him, the Turbokat descended. "Yeah. What happened? Where's the big pile of crud?"
Razor grinned. "French-fried to a crisp!" He frowned. "But not before it ate an entire subway train."
In the Turbokat, T-Bone grimaced in disgust. "Ugh, those poor sons a'..."
"Well... almost," said Razor. "I managed to save one car..." He glanced back at the entrance to the subway. "I saved something like a grand total of five people." Brightening a little, he turned and looked back up at the jet. "But on the bright side, I found a way to destroy these things!"
In the Turbokat, T-Bone nodded.
"Come pick me up, we gotta make a quick stop back at the hangar," said Razor. "And fast!"
"Roger."
It was time to go and see if his experimental Megavolt Missile was worth all the time he'd been putting into it...
~*~
Megakat Biochemical Labs was a large, solidly-built facility, standing some fifteen stories tall, modernistic in appearance with enormous windows and surrounded by a chain link fence with barbed wire along the top and a perimeter of large artillery cannons mounted on swivel bases.
In the main lab, chief biochemist Dr. Newton Zyme was preparing for the day's work. He was middle-aged with wavy orange hair and wore a white lab coat. He hated mornings. There was always so much to do, and a large majority of it couldn't be done until the other researchers arrived. And what a bunch of layabouts they were! Zyme thought as he fussed about in the main lab, an enormous room filled with all manner of futuristic-looking scientific equipment and machines, getting things ready for his employees to be able to do their work.
What few of them there were, anyway. Megakat Biochemical was horrendously understaffed these days. In the wake of Elrod Purvis' transformation into Dr. Viper, most of the lab's staff had elected to quit their jobs rather than come to work not knowing whether they'd be attacked by a mutated half cat, half snake mad scientist, or worse, eaten by one of the many freaks of nature he created.
So despite the building's size, it had a staff of less than 100 people, half of them security personnel. With the exception of Alvie and his friend whose name Zyme could never remember, most of the guards were the only dependable employees of the lab. Alvie and his friend tended to just sit around and eat donuts. Zyme had a feeling they would come to a bad end one day due to their inattentiveness.
Hearing the sound of an approaching helicopter, Zyme glanced up and out the window and saw a lone Enforcer chopper flying towards the building, from the direction of the new park where. The chopper flew overhead and Zyme thought it landed on the roof.
Since Dr. Viper's first appearance Zyme had mostly withdrawn from the public. He'd never had much of a social life prior to that, but, since Purvis' transformation into Viper, Zyme had become considerably less buoyant and didn't attend as many conventions or meetings, and completely threw himself into his work at the lab, even moreso than before. He wasn't even aware of the refinery bombings that had happened yesterday.
At the thought of Viper, Zyme glanced over at a small table in the far corner. Its lone occupant was an Erlenmeyer flask of water with a rose in it, with a tall glass dome barrier over it. The rose was mutated, possessing a four-fanged mouth and a lapping forked tongue. Zyme had kept the thing as a reminder of the Viper Mutagen project.
He heard the sound of the elevator dinging in the hallway, and a moment later a party of four cats came into the room. Commander Feral was leading them. Behind him were Mayor Manx, Callie Briggs and an Enforcer pilot.
"Good morning, Commander," he said as they approached.
"No time for idle chit-chat, Dr. Zyme," Feral replied, holding up a hand. "We've got serious trouble."
"Trouble?" Zyme asked. "What sort of trouble?"
Feral opened his mouth to explain when Manx walked up to Zyme suddenly, waving his arms wildly. "There's these huge purple things and they're headed right this way!"
Zyme looked confused. "Purple things? What on Earth are you talking about?"
Ignoring Manx's outburst, Feral said, "We don't know what they are. But they're big and getting bigger every minute. And worse, whenever we shoot them they split apart into more!" He scowled. "I found out that out the hard way." As though eager to change the subject, he said, "Doctor, we need your help to figure out what they are and how to kill them."
Suddenly, Manx grabbed Zyme by the front of his lab coat and shook him. "You've got to do something, Dr. Zyme!" he yelled desperately. "Before those big purple globs destroy my beautiful city!"
Feral grabbed the Mayor's shoulders and made him release the scientist. He then shooed Manx from the room. "Why don't you go out and wait in the hall, Mayor? And try to stay calm."
"Calm?" cried a terrified Manx, his voice rising. "At a time like this?! You're crazy!"
Gibbering in fear, he turned and ran from the lab, leaving the other four alone.
Zyme sighed and smoothed his lab coat out. "How soon until they get here?" he asked.
"About a minute-and-a-half!" cried Feral, pointing out the lab's enormous front windows. "Look! Here come two of them now!"
Zyme turned and looked out the huge front windows of the lab to see two huge purple-colored organisms stomping down the street, headed right for the lab! They were vaguely humanoid in shape, with arms and legs, and had enormous, black gaping-wide mouths that were... smiling? Both of the huge monsters were grinning, no, leering evilly as they approached. Those smiles gave Zyme the chills. Mustering his courage he approached the window, which ran from floor to ceiling; in fact, this entire wall of the main lab was glass, consisting of two of these huge windows.
He looked at the two monsters. They looked like giant germs! The one on the left had one huge, cycloptic eye, while the one on the right had two eyes. Never in his life had Zyme seen something so disgusting and terrifying.
Clearing his throat, he turned to Feral, Deputy Mayor Briggs, and the Enforcer pilot, saying, "They appear to be giant bacteria!"
They all frowned in disgust. Feral was impatient. "Okay, now we know what they are. But is there a way to stop them?"
Callie Briggs joined him at the window. Zyme stroked his chin, thinking. Obviously, the best way to deal with giant germs was with a large quantity of antibiotics. Luckily, the lab had a bulk supply. In fact, there was some in a few flasks on a nearby worktable, which Zyme went to, leaving Callie by herself over by the window.
"On such short notice, this is the best I can do," he said, picking up one of the flasks and holding up for the others to see. Feral in particular looked very interested, and leaned in close, eyeing the flask's contents. "It contains the most powerful antibiotics known," Zyme continued, letting Feral take it. "Hopefully, it should stop them."
"How are we going to deliver it?" asked Feral, handing the flask to his pilot as they heard the muffled explosion that signified the destruction of the second laser cannon. The other Enforcer frowned as he looked at the bubbling orange liquid, unsure of quite what to do with it.
"I have a large hypodermic needle which I think can be rigged to fire from your helicopter," Zyme said said.
Feral nodded. "Let's get to it, then. I just hope we have time!"
The three other kats watched as Zyme went and got the giant syringe off of a shelf in the back of the room.
"I can fill this with the formula. It's normally used to tranquilize large animals, but it should be able to inject the antibodies into the bacteria's system."
He placed it in Feral's open hands. The Commander looked down at it a moment. "Excellent," he said, turning to his pilot. "Prepare my chopper my at once!"
"Yes sir!" said the pilot, saluting and running off, still holding the flask. A moment later, he ran back, setting the flask back down on the table, then ran off again.
"I sure hope it works," said Callie over by the window. "Because those things are heading straight for us!"
"Don't worry, Ms. Briggs," Zyme assured her confidently, joining her by the window once more. He pointed outside. "As you can see, we're well-protected against any attack."
The lab's automated defenses swivelled around on their turrets to face the threat and opened fire. In addition, a cordon of uniformed security guards armed with laser rifles took up positions at the fence. Callie watched, hoping the blasts from the cannons didn't cause the two-eyed creature to split, idly wondering where the third monster was and whether the SWAT Kats had managed to kill it or not. Right as she wondered this, the two-eyed bacteria monster was knocked back by a blast from one of the cannons and she held her breath, but the monster didn't divide. She exhaled slowly.
The bacteria monsters stood there as the shells ripped right through their gooey bodies, doing no damage, the wounds sealing immediately afterward. The lasers fired by the guards had the same effect, passing harmlessly through the creatures' bodies. Roaring angrily, the one-eyed creature swung its fist and destroyed the cannon that had shot it. The creature with two eyes followed suit, smashing another gun beyond use.
The monsters advanced, trampling the fence underfoot. The guards backed up, firing with their laser rifles. The bacteria monsters ignored them, continuing to move inexorably forward onto the property, shrugging off the guards' fire and the bombardment from the remaining cannons. The two-eyed monster was the only one who still remembered its creator Dr. Viper's orders, and it went to the right and attacked the third cannon there while its single-eyed companion simply imitated it and went to the left and attacked a fourth cannon there. The air was filled with explosions and booming. With one mighty swipe, the one-eyed bacteria monster destroyed the third cannon.
The guards stopped firing their lasers. They looked around at one another before turning and fleeing in all directions.
Callie and Zyme watched from the window, turning to look at one another in dismay. There was an explosion as the fourth cannon was destroyed.
"Well, almost any attack..." Zyme admitted, a little nervously.
He turned and hurried away as a fifth explosion signalled another cannon's destruction. Callie, watching him go, didn't notice as a manhole popped open down on the street outside.
~*~
Dr. Viper had waited down in the sewer for the bacteria monsters to finish destroying all of the cannons that defended Megakat Biochemical. Although he correctly predicted they'd be of little use against his creations, better safe than sorry. After hearing the last explosion, he had climbed up the ladder and popped the manhole cover, peering out. The coast was clear. Katalyst 99 would be his! All of the cannons were destroyed. Knocking the cover off, Viper climbed out. He only saw two bacteria monsters. Where was the third one, the second single-eyed bacteria? Viper shrugged inwardly. Probably off somewhere else having fun, he guessed.
He had to note the irony of this particular sewer access point. Not only was it the manhole he'd used to arrive at Megakat Biochemical immediately following Purvis' resurrection and transformation into Dr. Viper, it had also provided the means for his escape after his first encounter, and first defeat, at the hands of the SWAT Kats.
He addressed the two monsters. "You two will keep wreaking havoc!" he commanded them. Would they understand? He didn't care. Not at this point. Turning, he approached the front door unmolested. "And I will raid the labsss!"
~*~
A few minutes later, Feral's chopper, rotor blades spinning, sat on the rooftop helipad as Dr. Zyme loaded the giant syringe containing the antibiotic formula, which had been modified into an ad-hoc missile, onto the side of the aircraft. Commander Feral looked on from the open side door.
Zyme stood back. "It's all loaded, Commander!"
"Good!" Feral said, turning to his pilot. "Let's go."
"Wait!" cried Mayor Manx, rushing out of the rooftop stairwell. "I'm coming, too!"
He ran across the roof and jumped into the open side of the chopper as it lifted off. He didn't quite make it. He hung there, half in and half out, kicking his legs frantically as he tried to pull himself up. The chopper lifted higher into the air.
"I don't want to be around here if this stuff doesn't work!" he was whimpering.
A disgusted Feral pulled him in the rest of the way. "You're a coward, Manx," he said.
Out of breath, Manx grinned and managed, "Maybe so. But I didn't get to be mayor for ten terms without being a wee bit cautious."
Feral grunted and pulled the door closed. As the chopper turned and flew off, Zyme walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down. Both of the bacteria monsters were just sort of standing there, milling around, not doing very much. One of them, the two-eyed one, grabbed a parked car and stuffed it into its mouth, eating it in one huge bite. Zyme then observed the creature grow in size a bit as the eaten car was added to its bulk. Swallowing nervously, he turned and went back inside.
The Turbokat came tearing out of the clouds. Flying between the buildings, T-Bone flew straight for Megakat Biochemical Labs and the remaining two bacteria monsters. The SWAT Kats had returned to the hangar, picked up Razor's "experimental beauty," as he called it, and doubled back as quickly as they could.
Their objective of getting their creator inside the fortress-like facility having been achieved, the bacteria monsters were simply milling around in the vicinity, dumbly following the last order they'd been given, to wreak havoc and keep the authorities occupied. The larger of the two, the one with two eyes, turned and saw the approaching Turbokat, and once again felt a dim, instinctive hatred of the aircraft. With a gurgling growl, it started down the street towards the approaching jet. It's cycloptic companion simply saw an airborne snack annoyingly out of its reach and remained by the labs, grabbing up parked cars from the facility's parking lot and from the curbs of the surrounding buildings and cramming them into its mouth, munching away stupidly, gradually increasing in size.
T-Bone made an exploratory pass of the two creatures, whooshing between them. The two-eyed bacteria made a frenzied but ultimately slow and clumsy effort to grab it. The one-eyed creature, in the process of stuffing someone's car into its maw, barely acknowledged the passing jet. The one with two eyes struck him as the more immediately dangerous of the two, given both its aggression and the fact, as T-Bone saw it, it could still divide. From what little experience he and Razor had with the creatures, T-Bone was relatively certain the single-eyed monsters were incapable of dividing.
T-Bone glanced back over his shoulder at Razor. "Okay, buddy," he said, "I'll get you in close enough for a good shot! Get the one with two eyes! It can still split and make three again!"
Razor nodded. "Affirmative." He agreed with his partner about which monster to target. The one still capable of dividing was definitely the one to take care of first, especially considering he had only one version of the missile he was about to use.
"Remind me again how we're gonna kill the other one with only one of these newfangled Megavolt Missiles ready...?" T-Bone asked.
"I dunno," Razor admitted. "I guess we'll just have to wing it."
"Fine with me," T-Bone grumbled.
He circled around and headed back toward the Biochemical Labs. Razor sighted the two-eyed bacteria monster through his scope, aiming for the most obvious target, that yawning, perpetially smiling black hole of a maw.
"Open wide, big guy! Say 'ahhh!'!"
Almost as if it heard him, the creature opened its huge mouth wider, as though it expected the Turbokat to fly right in. Razor fired. What appeared to be an ordinary missile flew towards the monster. But as with most of the missiles he designed, it was anything but. Razor had been working on electrical-based missiles for the past few months, and the first fruits of his labors had been this, the Megavolt Missile, whose casing popped off in midair, revealing a segmented conductor mechanism powered by a thousand mevavolt battery. Its one drawback was that it had no means of attaching itself to a target to deliver the electrical charge - a problem he didn't feel he'd encounter with these creatures with their soft, easily penetrable bodies, to say nothing of their tendency to just open their mouths and gulp down whatever came within reach, and the monster he'd targeted didn't disappoint.
The bacteria monster caught the treat in its mouth, gulping it down. The Turbokat flew past it, the creature looking mildly disappointed, smile aside, that the jet had not in fact simply flown right into its mouth after the missile, the SWAT Kats looking back at the huge beast over their shoulders. Nothing seemed to be happening.
T-Bone frowned. "Razor, I thought you said this would work!"
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the bacteria monster began to undergo a sudden change. Its eyes widened and for the first time, its smiled vanished, turning into a frown of confusion and surprise. Seconds later, bluish electrical bolts surged all over its body as it convulsed hideously and, finally, it blew it. The explosion was muted, more like a "poof" than anything, as the creature disappeared into a cloud of crumbling, ashen dust.
Razor smirked. "I, uh, neglected to mention the five-second countdown."
That was it for his one Megavolt Missile. No matter. Due to its shortcomings, he'd already begun designing a newer, better electrical missile to replace it, one capable of attaching itself to targets. He was considering calling it the Scrambler Missile, and he was already confident that its electrical output would surpass that of even the Megavolt. Now his thoughts turned to the final monster. It was incapable of dividing - or so he hoped - but it still represented a clear and present danger to the city, and it was getting larger and larger the more it ate, already almost as large as the buildings around it.
"Okay, sureshot," said T-Bone, circling the block high above, "any ideas on how we 'wing it?'"
Razor stroked his chin, then observed an Enforcer chopper - Feral's, he imagined - hovering nearby, beginning to approaching the final monster. He squinted through his targeting scope. Something had been attached to the side of the chopper. Perhaps the good folks at Megakat Biochemical had supplied the Enforcers with a means of combatting the creatures Razor hadn't thought of.
"Maybe we won't need to," he said, some doubt tinging his voice. He didn't exactly like Feral, but he didn't want him to fail, either; he hoped, in fact, for Megakat City's sake, that the short-tempered Enforcer Commander succeeded nevertheless. "Looks like Feral's gonna try something."
In the Enforcer chopper hovering nearby, Feral and Mayor Manx looked down at the smoking remains of the bacteria monster that the SWAT Kats had just killed.
The Mayor was jubiliant. "The SWAT Kats got that one, Feral!" One down, two to go! He and Feral were, of course, unaware of the fate of the third creature, as were those still inside the labs.
"And I'll get the other one!" Feral said matter-of-factly.
The remaining bacteria monster had just about empted the lab parking lot and surrounding street of rubber-tired edibles and, nearly twelve stories tall now, walked over to the front of the Megakat Biochemical building and looked in through the window. Callie and Dr. Zyme shrank back as the monster peered in at them with its huge yellow eye. The eye looked back and forth and between them. Callie was uneasy. She felt like a bug under a magnifying glass, or, worse, a piece of choice veal being ogled in a butcher's shop window.
Zyme smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, Ms. Briggs, these windows are made from reinforced armored glass," the biochemist said with what Callie took to be supreme overconfidence. "He can't get us."
So saying, he rapped his knuckles against the glass for emphasis confidently. Thunk-thunk! Callie wished she shared that overconfidence of his, and took a step back from the window, overcome by a dreadful feeling that maybe she and Dr. Zyme shouldn't be standing so close. She reached for his arm to pull him along with her. Suddenly, the monster lifted one enormous, gooey hand and slammed it against the window. The entire room shook. Callie jumped back, as did Zyme. The glass cracked. Zyme's smile - and confidence - vanished. He'd been assured the glass was unbreakable. If these creatures were capable of cracking it, then they weren't simply giant bacteria... they were super bacteria!
Callie was about to vocalize her now very real concern that they ought to get away from the window, when, after another hit, the glass exploded inwards, raining down over her and Zyme as they shielded their faces to avoid being cut. They looked up and screamed as the monster reached one gooey purple hand in through the window. It descended towards them, eclipsing them in its shadow. They screamed again. Callie closed her eyes. Zyme threw his arms up in a pitiful effort to defend himself. They waited for the end.
It didn't come. The hand withdrew. Something had distracted the singleminded creature from its task. Slowly opening her eyes, Callie hearing the whup-whup-whup! of approaching rotor blades. Flinching, she and Zyme watched, blinking, as the slimy purple hulk turned its back to them, to face Commander Feral's approaching chopper. Callie actually let out a little laugh of disbelieving relief. Saved by Feral! Again! Like Razor, she didn't think too highly of the Enforcer Commander... but she was beginning to.
Feral's pilot kept the chopper steady as it hovered in place, the bacteria monster approached it. At the sight of the creature, a whimpering Manx had retreated further back into the rear cargo area, as if that would protect him.
Seated at the firing controls, Feral narrowed his eyes behind the lenses of his targeting visor. "Open wide, slime bucket," he said, and fired.
The antibiotic projectile sailed straight and true. The monster caught and swallowed it, just as its recently deceased predecessor had caught and swallowed the SWAT Kats' missile.
"Got him!" Feral said triumphantly.
But nothing happened. The monster simply stood there. Feral blinked, raising the helmet's targeting visor, confused.
He wasn't the only one who was at a loss. In the main lab, Callie and Dr. Zyme stood beside the broken window, looking out at the unchanging bacteria monster. The longer the monster went without the powerful antibiotics affecting it somehow, the more and more worried the two became.
"I don't understand!" cried Zyme, distressed. "It's not working!"
They suddenly heard a hiss behind them and whirled around to find a pair of glowing yellow eyes peering out at them from a darkened corner of the room. A figure advanced forward. Gradually, a silhouette became visible. A lashing, snakelike tail. Tall, tapering spikes of hair. Dr. Viper stepped into the light, grinning hideously, his ceaseleasly moving tail audibly thumping against the floor behind him with horrifying glee.
He pointed a clawed finger at his former employer. "You were alwaysss a fool, Zyme! My giant bacteria are immune to antibioticsss!"
Any remaining courage drained from Zyme, and he stood defeated and trying to keep himself from trembling. He didn't want to show fear in Viper's presence. Neither did Callie. Mustering her courage, which was no easy task when faced with a twisted fiend such as the half kat, half snake who had proclaimed himself lord of the Dead Forest in particular and of Megakat Swamp in particular, Callie moved to put herself between Viper and Zyme, fists clenched in fury at her sides.
"Dr. Viper!" she said. "I should've known you'd be behind something like this!"
She'd suspected Viper might be behind something like the giant bacteria monsters, but, in truth, the things could've come from anywhere, and it wasn't until this exact moment, when she'd heard that all too familiar hiss behind her, that her suspicions had been confirmed.
Outside, the monster roared angrily and lifted one huge hand, swiping at Feral's chopper. The pilot tried to pull up, but a hit from the monster's hand sent the aircraft spinning out of control. It crashed upright in the street and skidded a ways, leaving a trail of sparks, until it came to a more or less gentle stop, bumping against one of the few parked cars the ravenous bacteria had overlooked. Inside, Feral, Manx and the pilot were shaken, but okay. The bacteria monster stomped towards the downed chopper with greedy hunger in its huge eye. Suddenly, the Turbokat zoomed past its face, commanding its full attention. It abandoned any interest in the crashed chopper and made a failed grab at the jet, slimy fingers closing on empty air as the Turbokat was already out of reached.
T-Bone swung back around, flying at the monster. "Whatever Feral tried to do, it didn't work, buddy!"
"At least he saved Callie and that doctor guy!" Razor said, having witnessed what had very nearly been Callie Briggs' gruesome death from afar, his heart skipping a beat. He never thought he'd say this, but thank goodness for Feral sometimes. "But now it's up to us to take this thing out!"
"Roger," said T-Bone. He swooped past the bacteria monster a second time, the monster trying once again to grab the jet unsuccessfully.
Back inside Megakat Biochemical, Viper seemed content to ignore both Callie and Dr. Zyme, moving through the room with that waddling, slithering walk of his. Okay, so, she thought, it's Dr. Viper. Now what? Try and escape? Wait to be rescued by the SWAT Kats? Attack him? Behind her, Zyme was inching towards the door. Callie realized the biochemist had the right idea. Waiting to be rescued was foolhardy... and trying to attack someone like Dr. Viper was suicide. And so she joined him in moving towards the door... until she saw where Viper was headed, and fury overtook her.
He went over to the shelves where numerous katalysts, some in stoppered Erlenmeyer flasks, others in futuristic-looking canisters, sat neatly-labeled and lined up in numerical order. Viper grabbed one canister filled with a dull orange bubbly chemical, not too dissimilar in the color of the antibiotic formula Feral had just tried and failed to use against the remaining giant bacteria, and grinned.
"Katalyssst 99!" he said, more to himself than to his audience of two. "At lassst!"
He grabbed another. And another. And another. And still more. His arms were full to overflowing with them, and still he grabbed more, as though intent on taking every single sample the lab had on hand. And with each canister he grabbed, Callie's fury grew. She'd expected something grander from the evil scientist to justify the destruction caused by his creations. She was not directly aware of anyone who'd died as a result of the bacteria's rampage, but she was positive at least some citizens had been hurt or killed. And she thought of how she and Dr. Zyme, who remained behind her, having hesitated at the door, refusing to leave without her, had almost been killed by one of the things. All so Viper could steal some chemicals.
And as her anger overtook her, she took a few steps towards the snakelike scientist greedily gathering up canisters of katalysts like a kid in a candy store, and she confronted him directly.
"So that's what all this is about?" she cried. "A robbery?! What kind of sick, twisted-"
Angrily, Viper turned with his armload of Katalyst 99, cutting her off. "Sssilence! How dare you quessstion my plansss?"
You arrogant sicko, Callie thought. All thoughts of not provoking the mutated villain went out the proverbial broken window as a furious Callie grabbed a pencil jar off a nearby desk and threw it at him. It smacked into the back of Viper's head, sending pencils flying everywhere. He tensed and his eyes glowed with fury.
"You won't get away with this, Viper," Callie vowed. "The SWAT Kats will see to that!"
"No, Ms. Briggsss..." Viper said without turning around.
Suddenly, his tail lashed out, whipping across the room, and before Callie could react, it encircled her, and Zyme behind her, coiling around them. It tightened. They were squeezed together against one another, and Callie felt the air forced from her lungs. The coils crushed so tightly around them that the buttons on her blazer popped off. Viper dragged them over to himself.
"...it's you who won't get away!" he finished, cackling evilly.
So much for doing things the smart way, Callie thought, scolding herself for having let her temper, her anger at Viper's petty motivations get the better of her. Now there was no hope for escape, unless...
Whoosh! The Turbokat flew past the broken window, close enough that Callie caught the briefest of glimpses of T-Bone and Razor in the cockpit. The SWAT Kats!
In the Turbokat, the SWAT Kats got a glance of Viper with his prisoners as they flew by. "Callie!" cried T-Bone in dismay.
"And Dr. Viper!" said Razor. "So he's behind all this!"
Inside the lab, Viper was beyond furious. The final bacteria monster stepped into view, its enormous purple bulk filling the view out the window. For a brief instant, Callie was terrified Viper would fling her and Zyme into its mouth, but, instead, he simply pointed at it with his free hand, arm quaking in fury.
"Get them! Desssstroy the SWAT Katsss!" he rasped. The monster roared and moved off to obey. With that seen to, Viper seemed to calm down some. As for his two prisoners, he said, "A couple of hossstages should ensure my essscape. And when we return to my home in the Dead Foressst, I'll be sure to make you both quite comfortable." He cackled and flicked his forked tongue.
Callie shuddered in horror and disgust. She had no doubt that Viper's idea of "comfortable" was something truly repugnant indeed.
~*~
The Turbokat flew down the street with the final bacteria monster plodding along behind it, pushing buildings over to make room for itself as it pursued the aircraft. Razor looked back to see the wide mouth open, rushing up to devour them. The thing was slowly but steadily gaining on them!
"Step on it, T-Bone!" he cried.
"I am!" said T-Bone, pushing the jet's power to the max. This successfully put some distance between them and the monster, the creature roaring in pain as it got a face full of the Turbokat's flaming jet exhaust. "Yeah, eat afterburner!" T-Bone yelled.
But this only deterred the creature for a few moments before it recovered and resumed its pursuit. There was no way it could catch them now, but there was still plenty of damage it could do and plenty of lives it could take, all while its slithery creator was doing who knew what to Callie back at Megakat Biochemical.
Knowing Dr. Viper was behind the monsters - whatever they were, as the SWAT Kats had not been privy to Dr. Zyme's identification of them - was revelatory but not exactly helpful to them. At least not to T-Bone. Given time, Razor could probably come up with a few theories about the things' origins and makeup and figure out a means of killing this last monster based on that information, but time was something they didn't have. Lives were hanging in the balance. The longer the final monster lived, the more people it endangered... and the more time it bought for Dr. Viper to escape with Callie and Zyme as his prisoners.
Just the thought of Callie in Dr. Viper's slimy coils filled T-Bone with rage and he gritted his teeth as he wracked his brain, trying to think of a way to kill this final creature so he could return to Megakat Biochemical and make Viper eat his fist.
It was best, he knew, to go with what they knew worked. Heat and electricity. The Turbokat's afterburners had certainly hurt it, but the amount of jet fuel they'd need to cook a walking pile of slime that was growing increasingly taller than the buildings it was knocking down was more than the Turbokat could carry. That left electricity. T-Bone glanced over at some powerlines leading towards a power substation. The Megavolt Missile had done well for the two-eyed creature a few minutes ago, and from what Razor had told him about what had happened in the subway, so had the subway tracks' third rail. He grinned. An idea was forming.
"I've got an idea!" he said.
"I'm all ears!" said Razor.
"I'm gonna wing it just like you said," T-Bone said, his grin broadening, amused at his own joke.
Razor didn't get it. T-Bone pointed, and he glanced over following T-Bone's pointing finger. He still didn't understand what his friend meant by "winging it," but he imagined that whatever it was the bigger SWAT Kat had in mind involved electrocuting the crud out of Viper's final monster, so he was all for it, nodding and giving his partner a thumbs-up.
T-Bone banked right and flew down a side street towards the substation. It was a mid-sized, nearly featureless building surrounded by huge metal transformer towers. A sign on the front read "Megakat Power Sub-Station: Restricted!" Low-hanging powerlines snaked out from the towards to feed the hungry buildings of Megakat City, gradually rising in height as taller and taller towers carried them towards their destinations.
Deftly avoiding the powerlines, T-Bone swooped under them, up and around in a wide turn as the bacteria monster emerged from between the buildings from the side street and headed towards the power station. As though suspecting something, it paused, and for a brief instant as he made his turn, T-Bone was afraid his plan wasn't going to work... but then the grinning purple behemoth continued forward. Moving cars on a metal bridge passing over the area a few blocks ahead had apparently caught its eye, and it forgot all about the Turbokat.
Completing his turn, T-Bone flew down towards the monster as it lumbered underneath the powerlines. Now, suddenly, as the red and black jet returned to its field of vision, it remembered Dr. Viper's orders: destroy the SWAT Kats. And so the last of the bacteria monsters forgot about the yummy-looking cars on the bridge and plodded forward dumbly with outstretched arms, intent on catching and swallowing the Turbokat.
"I sure hope you know what you're doing!" said Razor. To him, it seemed like his partner intended to fly directly into the thing's huge, grinning maw. He had a bizarre mental image of flying inside its body to fight its brain.
"Boy do I ever!" said T-Bone. He looked over his shoulder. "Like I said... I'm gonna wing it." He turned back around and pushed the throttle forwards. He narrowed his eyes at the creature he closed the distance between them. "You're gonna get a charge outta this, big guy!"
Now Razor understood what T-Bone had meant by winging it. He understood even before T-Bone flipped the Turbokat around to fly sideways, one wing aimed down at the street, the other pointing towards the sky. He couldn't himself and laughed as he finally got the joke, T-Bone skillfully piloting the jet under the powerlines mere inches from the monster's body right as it was passing underneath them. The upturned wing hit and cut the wires, which fell right onto the bacteria monster. Thousands, maybe millions of volts, all intended to power the surrounding area of the city, coursed through the monster's body. It convulsed, its eye rolling up and back in its head. Unlike its brothers, it continued smiling throughout its gruesome electrocution. It was unnerving to watch the thing die with that stupid smile on its face, and the SWAT Kats couldn't help shuddering a little.
The monster's body turned from a soft, slimy purple to a crusty, burnt brownish gray, and it hardened into a dried up husk, formerly yellow eye white, shrivelled and blank, sparks still flying from the downed lines as the monster just stood there, mouth open in a silent, smiling scream of pain. The last vestige of Morbulus was gone, although the SWAT Kats couldn't know this and never would. After a moment, the husk started to crack and crumble away, first in little chunks, and finally in enormous blobs, collapsing into a dusty pile in the middle of the street.
"Yeah!" cried T-Bone.
"That was great, T-Bone!" cried Razor.
"It was great 'cause it was your idea, buddy!" replied the other SWAT Kat. "Like you said. I winged it."
Razor sighed. T-Bone wasn't going to let this go for a while. "Sure, sure, a clever play on words." His expression hardened. "Now, let's double back and head back to Megakat Biochemical Labs!"
"Yeah," agreed T-Bone. "We've got a snake to catch!"
The jet swooped down the street, the wind blowing away little particles of what had once been the bacteria monster.
~*~
Viper snickered evilly as he held his armfuls of Katalyst 99. Callie and Dr. Zyme still struggled in the grip of his tail. By now, he reasoned, his creation had killed the SWAT Kats. After that, he didn;t care where it went or what it did, as long as it kept everyone busy long enough for him to escape with his prisoners. Suddenly, the lights went out. That was odd. Oh, well, he thought. No matter. He glanced over his shoulder as the Deputy Mayor and his former employer continued their useless wiggling.
And, he reminded himself, his true prize. He looked down at all of that Katalyst 99, bubbling away in the containers. His at last to do with as he pleased. He flicked his forked tongue in pleasure as he envisioned his true plans for the chemical. It was the final ingredient he needed to create a spore pod to--
His thoughts were interrupted by the familiar toar of jet engines growing steadily louder and louder. He turned to look out the remaining, unbroken window of the room.
"Huh?!" he cried.
The Turbokat was flying right at him.
"Aahhhhh!!!" he screamed, struggling to think of something, anything, to do to avert the utter disaster he saw unfolding before him.
There was no time. Two Octopus Missiles smashed through the armored glass, knocking the mutated scientist back. Although he managed to keep hold of his load of katalysts, the impact caused him to drop his two hostages, who were dropped harmlessly aside, rolling across the floor. Still clutching his armful of canisters, the evil biochemist flew across the room and smacked into the wall, the missiles punching through into the next room. There were muffled explosions from next door. Viper slid to the floor, the canisters finally falling from his grip and rolling every which way. Stunned, Viper couldn't even entertain the idea of going after them before part of the lab roof caved in, burying him under debris.
Putting the Turbokat into VTOL mode, T-Bone flew in and landed. His calculations regarding the size of Megakat Biochemical's huge main laboratory had been correct. It was easily large enough to contain the jet. Popping the canopy, he leaped out and walked over to where Callie and Zyme were, having remained where they'd fallen. They both sat up. He checked Zyme first. The biochemist was shaken up pretty badly but otherwise unhurt. Then he turned to Callie, kneeling down beside her and placing a hand on her shoulder. Her hair was a little frazzled and her glasses were crooked, but like Zyme she seemed otherwise fine.
"Are you okay, Ms. Briggs?" he asked gently.
"Yeah, I'll live," she replied.
With a smile, T-Bone straightened her glasses for her. She blushed a little at the affectionate gesture.
"But where's--" she began.
She was cut off as Dr. Viper popped up from under the debris a few feet away. He looked quite ticked off, his lab coat torn and shredded, hair frazzled and askew. His eyes glowed. "Curssse you, you meddling SWAT Katsss!" he shrieked hoarsely in impotent rage.
Getting out of the jet, Razor hopped down. T-Bone rose and the two stood side by side, readying their Glovatrixes. "Party's over, Viper," Razor said angrily.
Viper only responded with evil laughter. "Hardly!" he said, and thrust his arms into the wreckage at his feet, rummaging around. After a moment, he pulled them back out, a canister of Katalyst 99 in each hand. "There haven't been any fireworks yet!"
So saying, he began violently shaking them. The SWAT Kats hesitated, puzzled.
Suddenly, Dr. Zyme leaped to his feet, pointing. "Nooooooo!" he cried. "Viper, don't! Katalyst 99 is too volatile! You'll destroy the whole building!"
Laughing insanely now, Viper hurled the shaken canisters at the floor between himself and the SWAT Kats, where they explodeed! Fire erupted wherever the fizzing orange liquid landed. A blaze quickly engulfed the lab, the flames moving towards some shelves of chemicals nearby. T-Bone seemed intent on braving the fire to apprehend Viper, who was rushing towards the door with what looked like two or three canisters of Katalyst 99 in his hand; it was difficult to tell in the fire and smoke. Razor grabbed his arm, stopping him.
"Let me go!" the big SWAT Kat demanded, tugging. "I'm gonna bring that slimy lizard to justice, and nothing's gonna stop me!"
"Not even flammable chemicals that'll blow us all into orbit?!" cried Razor, pointing. "T-Bone! Think! We've gotta get out of here before the flames hit those chemicals!"
T-Bone conceded. He was angry at not being able to get Viper, but getting themselves and Callie to safety was more important. He grabbed Callie's wrist, and the two hopped into the cockpit. There wasn't even time to buckle in as Callie settled into T-Bone's lap. Razor got in next.
"Come on, Doc!" Razor said, offering a hand down to Zyme, which the biochemist grabbed without hesitation. He grunted, pulling the scientist into the jet. Like Callie, Zyme was forced to sit in Razor's lap, but Razor didn't mind. He didn't get the damsel like his partner did, but at least they were getting the heck out of there!
The canopy slid shut over the four's heads, and T-Bone turned the jet around so the nose was pointing out the broken window they'd flown in through, the engines aimed towards the back wall of the room, the one Viper and the Octopus Missiles had slammed into.
"Everybody hang on!" T-Bone yelled, and punched it.
The Turbokat's engines ignited right when the shelves of chemicals did. The flames hit the barrels and they went up in huge gouts of flame that tore through the ceiling even as the Turbokat's engines obliterated the entire back wall. The entire front of the building exploded, raining glass and debris down onto the street and the ruined artillery cannons while Feral and Mayor Manx looked on from beside the crashed Enforcer chopper.
The Turbokat roared triumphantly through the flames, a bit singed, but otherwise unharmed, and flew down the street before landing. Leaving Manx by the chopper, Feral ran over, relieved to see Deputy Mayor Briggs and Dr. Zyme both alive and well, each in the lap of a SWAT Kat. And, much as he hated to admit it, he was glad the two vigilantes were alive, as well. After all, he wanted them jailed, not killed. The canopy opened and the SWAT Kats got out, helping Callie and Zyme down.
"Ms. Briggs!" cried Feral as he ran up. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," she replied, and smiled at T-Bone. "Thanks to the SWAT Kats."
Feral couldn't contain his contempt. "Pheh!" he grumbled. "Thanks to them, half of Megakat City is without power!" The loss of power in the area hadn't gone unnoticed by him. He swept one enormous hand towards Megakat Biochemical blazing down the street. "And Megakat Biochemical Labs is totally destroyed!"
"Actually, Commander," said Dr. Zyme, holding up a finger, "that was Dr. Viper's doing."
"Viper, huh?" said Feral. That figured. "Makes sense that he'd be behind something like this." He itched to cuff that slippery freak of nature. "Where is he?" he demanded.
T-Bone jerked a thumb back at the burning lab. "In there. You're welcome to go looking for him."
Despite himself, Feral managed to crack a smile. "Thanks, I'll pass," he said. His smiled faded. "All right, I won't charge you for the damage to the labs, but I still hold you responsible for the loss of power!"
Both SWAT Kats hopped defiantly back into the cockpit.
"When you find a better way to deep-fry a hundred tons of purple glop, Feral, you let us know," said T-Bone.
Feral was still ranting, shaking his fist. "And don't forget the Megakat Refinery! And the damage to City Hall!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said T-Bone, "send us a bill!"
Feral grit his teeth angrily and considered drawing his laser pistol as the cockpit canopy slid closed again. He could fire a warning shot in order to persuade them to surrender. But he banished this ludicrous notion from his head. His pistol never left the shoulder holster under his greatcoat. He hated the SWAT Kats, but they had saved the Deputy Mayor and Dr. Zyme and stopped Viper, and killed his monsters. He supposed he could let them go this time. There'd be another chance to bring them to justice.
Everyone stood back as the jet took off from the street. T-Bone and Razor gave Callie and Feral a thumbs-up. Callie smiled and waved. Feral just scowled. They stood and watched as the Turbokat flew away. It was now the early afternoon, the sun much higher in the sky, the reddish hue of the morning giving way to the lighter green of day.
"Y'know, I think it's gonna turn out to be a beautiful day, eh Razor?" T-Bone said, content. After the disaster that had been the previous day, this morning's more successful outing had put him in a good mood. Another building had been destroyed, but at least this time it hadn't been their fault.
"Affirmitive," agreed Razor. "Let's go home."
As the Turbokat flew over the power substation, T-Bone glanced down to see Burke and Murray using a bulldozer to clean up the smouldering remains of the last bacteria monster by the powerlines. Some Megakat Power linemen were busy repairing the downed lines. "Hey, check it out."
"Yeah," said Razor, "looks like Burke and Murray have one loooong day ahead of them."
"Remind me to get 'em some anchovy pizza when they get back," T-Bone said. "Jerks or not, they'll have earned it."
Razor smiled and nodded as the Turbokat flew off into the horizon.
The End.
