This one is kind of short and just really filler to keep things going. My apologies.

"Why can't we just make a computer generated presentation?" Jake balanced his laptop on his outstretched legs, typing furiously, already working on the project his own way while he cradled the phone between his head and shoulder.

"Because everyone is doing that." Miranda hissed in his ear. "Nobody really does anything paws on anymore. We should get back to basics and actually make a presentation."

"That's too artsy." Jake complained. "Not my style."

"Not your style?" Miranda scoffed. "You spend half the time sketching air planes! It won't kill you to draw something halfway related to English class."

"First of all, they're fighter jets. Not just air planes." Jake defended. "Second, my answer is still no. You wanna go all hippie-barefoot-tree-hugging artist, fine. You do it your way, I'll do it mine and we'll just have two presentations."

"That's not the way this is supposed to work." Miranda growled. "I'm not getting a bad grade because you refuse to cooperate."

"I'm not refusing to cooperate." Jake argued. "I'm so sick of everyone telling me I have to do things their way. I'm not budging on this."

"What are you talking about?" Miranda sighed. "You always do this. You say something completely unrelated and change the subject and end up getting what you want." She sighed. "You know what? Fine. We'll just do this on our own and present them together."

"Fine." Jake huffed. "Bye." He pressed the off button before she had a chance to say anything else. "Miss two days of school and all of a sudden she's the boss." He sniffled, still trying to work through the remnants. "Screw that."

It wasn't long before Chance was closing up the shop. "So I didn't get a chance to show you what I found a few days ago." He locked the doors. "You done?"

Jake shut his laptop. "For now." He stood up and stretched. "What is it?"

"It's down in the hangar." Chance looked excited.

Jake made haste following him into the office and downstairs. "Whoa!" He darted over to the fuselage. "Chance... this is in near perfect condition!" He ghosted a paw over the dented gray metal.

"Those dirt bags that dump the truckload of trash on our doorstep every morning, brought this in the other day." Chance beamed. "And I found these babies while you were at school today." He walked over to a tarp and quickly removed it, revealing a pair of large turbine engines.

Jake walked around them slowly, inspecting with a critical eye. "These might work for the VTOL if I can get them to rotate." He bit his bottom lip firmly, working it out in his brain.

Chance furrowed his brow in thought. "That's a lot of weight for just two turbines. We're going to need at least four to push it up."

"Yeah." Jake scratched the back of his head. "Let's get to work."

"So I was thinking we need a different approach to taking down thugs like Dark Kat." Jake said as he worked to get the engines working.

"Like what?" Chance asked, elbows deep in dirty, greasy parts right beside the teen.

"The Enforcers use simple weapons: lasers, bullets, explosions." Jake paused to wipe his face with his sleeve. "We need to be more specific in our attacks. Special weapons to take out special criminals. Dark Kat has a huge technological lead on the Enforcers. I'm positive we can close the gap."

"Special weapons and tactics," Chance slowly turned to look at Jake. "SWAT."
Jake's eyes widened and he smiled. "The SWAT Kats. That's perfect!"

"Any ideas for these weapons?"

"We should aim to take our enemies down in a more civilized manner." Jake dove back into his work. "And we need to be resourceful. Since we can't exactly order machine gun rounds, I was thinking of something along the lines of a Gatling gun that fires cement. And... and what if we took a taser and modified it into a missile?"

Chance frowned. "That could work, but I think I'd need to see it in action first. What about paw to paw combat?"

Jake grinned. "Aside from your brick walls-for-fists and the martial arts training I took in the academy?"

"Yeah." Chance looked up. "That."

"That's a surprise." Jake looked back down. "Already in the works."

Chance gave him a suspicious look. "When have you had the time to work on something else?"

Jake looked up briefly and then back down. "Ah... well... you know... science class is really boring. As long as I'm not sleeping in his class, Mr. Teele doesn't really care what I'm doing."

Chance shook his head. "You sure about that?"

Jake looked confused. "Yeah. Why?"

"I got a call today. He wants me to come in for a conference."

Jake groaned. "Seriously? Did he say why?"

"Nope. Just that he wants to talk about how you're doing." Chance removed his paws from the turbine. "Let's call it a night. We've got the whole weekend to work on this."
Jake complied, mind turning over what he could have possibly done to make his teacher feel like he needed to talk to Chance. It wasn't like he didn't complete his assignments.

"Go ahead and get cleaned up." Chance nodded towards the concrete stairs. "I'll finish up down here."

Jake nodded and left Chance to his own devices down in the hangar.

Chance wasn't surprised to find Jake already working on their jet the next morning. In truth, he was never surprised when he found Jake's bed empty and barely slept in. It probably saw more use when he was sick than it had since they'd moved in.

"So why is it," the tabby said, setting a bowl of cereal on the cluttered work bench. "That you never sleep?"

Jake leaped down from his perch on top of the assembled fuselage. "Who said I never sleep?" He dug into the sugary sweet breakfast item with all the gusto expected of a growing teenager.

"Aw come on, Jake. You can't expect me to believe you weren't down here the moment you were positive I was sawing logs." Chance had his own bowl of cereal, which he enjoyed at a much more reasonable pace.

"Doesn't mean I didn't sleep." Jake glared at him, letting his spoon clank loudly against the ceramic dish. "Why does it bother you so much?"
"When I was 13, Ma had to literally drag me out of bed, especially on the weekends. It's Saturday morning and you've already made more progress than I did on my own last night. I just wanna know why you do it." Chance didn't look up, having found that sometimes making eye contact with Jake when asking him a serious question was the equivalent of holding a gun to his head. It spooked him.

Jake shrugged. "First of I'll, I'm going to be fourteen next month. And I'm positive that I'm far more mature than you were when you were my age. Which leads me to my second point." He sat the bowl down and picked up a socket wrench and began to absently twirl it around. "My brain goes mach ten sometimes. I can't sleep through that."

"Your parents never..."

"My dad..." Jake cut him off with an icy glare. "Had other priorities. He was too busy to worry about my sleeping patterns. Besides, Enforcers had a curfew on me. Remember? Half my designs came from pacing around my dorm at two in the morning."

"What about your mom?" Chance pried.

Jake dropped the wrench loudly. "She's dead."

"What was she like?" Chance tilted his slightly up.

Jake quickly scooped up the wrench. "I don't wanna talk about this." His tail swished almost violently behind him as he walked back over to the evolving jet.

"Right." Chance sighed. "It's gonna be a long day."

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Chance whooped loudly over the roar of the engines from inside the shell of the cockpit while Jake tweaked with some of the connections. They coughed and sputtered to a stop and then the teen pulled himself up to sit behind Chance. "Alright so we've got some turbo powered engines and most of the makings of an F-14 Tomkat."

"Not bad." Chance grinned and scrubbed a greasy paw through Jake's sweaty fur.

"Ugh." Jake jerked his head backwards.

"Let's go get cleaned up and get some dinner." Chance slid out from the cockpit. "I think we ought to paint it black and red."

Jake scrunched his nose. "Black and red?" He shook his head. "Black maybe, but red isn't very stealthy."

"Yeah but its one of those colors you associate with fear and stuff." Chance suggested.

Jake chuckled. "You read too many comic books."

"And you read too many physics books." Chance retorted. "It wouldn't hurt ya to stop acting so grown up all the time."

"Is that you telling me to act immaturely?" Jake smirked. "And can I have that in writing?"

"I'm just saying," Chance shrugged. "You're thirteen... almost fourteen... you've got a reprieve from your life as an Enforcer and weapons designer prodigy. You should take advantage of it. Enjoy it."

Jake snorted. "I don't exactly have a huge desire to lounge around in my pajamas watching Scaredy Kat on Saturday mornings."

"Something wrong with that?" Chance looked defensive.

"Not at all." Jake grinned. "I just feel like I'm more mature than that."

"Have you ever had any fun in your life?" Chance narrowed his eyes at Jake.

"Of course I have." Jake scoffed. "Despite what you might think, I enjoy building stuff."
"Not that kind of fun." Chance rolled his eyes. "I like flying but it's different. I'm talking about senseless fun. The kind where you just shut your brain off and go with it."

Jake shook his head. "I don't understand what you're saying, Chance."

"You ever go to the fair?" Chance paused at the door leading into the garage.

"The fair?" Jake choked out.

"Yeah." Chance sighed. "You know, rides and games and stuff?"

"I know what the fair is." Jake snorted.

"Good." Chance smirked. "You're not half as naive as I thought you were. Have you ever been?"

Jake's ears flattened. "No."

"Why am I not surprised?" Chance shook his head. "I saw the flier in the paper. Next week the fair will be in town. We're going."

Jake shrugged. "I got dibs on the shower."

"Don't let me stop you." Chance teased, following him up into their apartment.

Kind of a bullshit chapter. My bad. I'm working up to better stuff.

Nyte Kat.