She got herself a cup of hot tea and drank it slowly, exhaling as she reflected on her stagnating career as a reporter, if only to take her mind off her very weird encounter with what had once been Dr. Harley Street earlier that day. She'd bristled when given the task of doing a mere traffic report earlier than day, but had kept her mouth shut. Work was work, and her editor wasn't the type of person you argued with. Nevertheless, it bothered Ann immensely that despite being what many considered the face of Kat's Eye News, MBC didn't pay her much for the work she put in - work that was often extremely dangerous. She suspected it was partly because her co-workers resented her ambition and tenacity, and her superiors considered her reckless. Once upon a time, before she'd earned a reputation for herself as MBC's best field reporter, her nickname around the office had been "Ann-bitious." Since then, the nickname had gone away, but the grumblings of the other reporters - not all, but many - about her putting her career above her journalistic integrity had never quite stopped.
With the mug of tea, she went into her living room and sat on the sofa, kicking her high heels off and trying to relax. She sighed. It was untrue, of course. Ann had never denied her ambition to become the best reporter at Kat's Eye News, but the idea she valued her career more than breaking important stories was ludicrous and it offended her. She simply wanted what she believed she was owed for all the hard, dangerous work she'd put in over the years, putting her life on the line to ensure the citizens of Megakat City were kept aware of everything that was newsworthy. Traffic reports, while honest, admirable work the public relied on, was, frankly, beneath her.
She'd had a taste of the limelight a few times, mostly due to colleagues falling ill or having family emergencies. She'd gotten to host a talk show for a week a year earlier, during which time she'd interviewed Commander Feral about his (in her opinion, baseless) accusations that the SWAT Kats had destroyed Megakat Biochemical Labs and the Megakat Tunnel without provocation. And during the attempted robbery of the Megakat Mint by the Metallikats and the subsequent rampage of the giant machine known as Zed a few months ago, Ann had gotten a filled in for the regular newscaster who'd called in sick. Both times, of course, her stint had been short-lived, and the regulars had eventually returned, and she'd been sent back to do field work.
But as much as it annoyed her, she couldn't say she disliked the work. Dangerous as it was, she couldn't deny getting a thrill from being so close to all of the various threats plaguing Megakat City, and, whether she felt she deserved a talk show gig or a job as a newscaster, she enjoyed showing up her more timid colleagues who were less willing to get close to danger. Not that she was reckless, despite what everyone said; she valued her life and the lives of others, and every risk she took was, in her opinion a calculated one.
And, in the end, she was doing important work, so she couldn't be said to be entirely dissatisfied with the path her career had taken. Flexing her toes, Ann leaned forward and put the mug on the low coffee table in front of her, removing her necklace and her earrings, placing them into a small ashtray on the table. She didn't smoke. The ashtray had been her father's and she'd kept it for the purpose of holding various little odds and ends like spare change, keys, and her jewelry. Undoing the top few buttons of her dress shirt, she was starting to remove her jacket when she became aware of a faint buzzing noise, and turned, jacket half on and half off, to look out the window. She didn't see anything. Suddenly, the phone rang. Rising, she finished taking the jacket off and went to the phone.
Outside, Dr. Harley Street was flying towards Skycor Towers, the stoppered flask of the chemical whose main ingredient was Super-Katalyst 666 clutching in one hand, Murdoch flying along behind him. Street was dimly aware that Murdoch was his last remaining ally; he could no longer sense the other kats he'd bitten and converted through the psychic connection all Ci-Kat-A shared. It'd started with Gray Taylor, the Enforcer they'd been forced to leave behind at Megakat Biochemical Labs. Not even half an hour later, one by one, Steven, the five MASA guards and the three convicts who'd been converted along with Murdoch had followed suit. Street was distressed by this, as he was unaware whether this meant they'd been killed... or, worse, cured. His eyebrows furrowed in indignant concern as the possibility that someone had developed a means of combating the venom used to convert unwitting victims into loyal acolytes of the Ci-Kat-A cause. Somehow he knew Viper had something to do with it; after all, the slippery snake had made himself immune to the venom, and he had escaped...
...which had been entirely Street's fault, he realized, mentally kicking himself. He'd ordered his followers to let the mutated biochemist go. At the time, he hadn't cared where Viper went or what Viper did, but, now, with the loss of mental contact with all of his other "brothers," Street was beginning to regret the decision not to hunt the snake down and kill him. Had Viper gone to the authorities, offering his immunity to the bite in return for immunity from more Earthly legal consequences, or even just to ruin Street's plans? Street didn't know for certain. All he did know is he had to hurry and get his queen.
As the two got closer and closer to the building, Street's multi-faceted compound eyes scanned every window until he spotted Ann Gora. There she was. His queen! She was on the phone. "And now, my future queen," he said, "it's time I paid you a visit..."
Back inside her apartment, Ann was on the phone with her editor. There'd been an attack at Manx Municipal Park. By the Ci-Kat-A. Ann felt her stomach do flip-flops. So much for not thinking about Dr. Street anymore today. "An attack on the park?" she asked wearily. Her editor was talking very fast and it was difficult to quite make out what he was going on about, but apparently there'd been giant worms and weird half plant, half insect creatures, and somehow Dr. Viper was involved. And of course he wanted her to go down there and cover the aftermath. She sighed. "Sure, I can get down there right away..."
Turning, she gasped as she saw none other than Dr. Harley Street making a beeline for the window with another converted kat behind him. Crud, she thought; not only was she going to have to think about Street some more today, she was about to get attacked by him! She screamed as the glass shattered, her editor on the other end of the phone, worried, demanding to know what was wrong. The buzzing alien scientist landed, the other Ci-Kat-A right behind him, and they approached Ann as she struggled to find her voice, to tell her editor to call the Enforcers.
"I've come for you, my dearest!" Street declared like a gentleman caller paying a visit.
Finally, Ann managed to scream into the phone, "Call the Enforcers, I'm being attacked!"
Striding forward, Street grabbed the phone, tossing it away. "Now, now, Ms. Gora," he chided, wagging one clawed finger, "none of that. We don't want anyone to spoil the mood!" He turned to his accomplice, holding the flask out to him. "Guard the door."
The other kat-insect nodded, taking the flask from him. Ann observed he was one of the ones from Megakat Biochemical earlier that day, wearing a prison issue white shirt with a serial number on it. Somewhere in the back of her terrified mind, she dimly remembered hearing about a group of convicts escaping from an Enforcer substation and disappearing into the swamp. Between that and Dr. Viper's apparent involvement with Street, Ann guessed that this had been the fate of the escaped criminals; turned into mindless drones for the former MASA scientist. The buzzing former prisoner went and stood by the front door as commanded.
Street gently took Ann's arms by the wrists. She was petrified, shaking. Was he going to bite her? Was she going to end up like the bug-eyed con guarding the door and so many other unfortunate souls like the MASA guards and that Enforcer rookie from earlier? She felt a sob hitching in her throat.
Street seemed oblivious to her terror. "Yes, think of it, Ann," he was saying, "the story of a lifetime!"
He made no move to sink his mandibles into her. That was something. Composing herself and steeling her nerves, trying to buy time, hoping her editor had managed to call the Enforcers, Ann decided to change tactics. Fear clearly wouldn't sway Street or his companion and prevent them from turning her; in their minds, they were doing her a favor. So she decided to play along, somewhat, adopting a more casual air with her "guest." Slipping into professional mode, she began to ask questions of the raggedly-dressed former scientist.
"The story of a lifetime? Well, Doctor, you do owe me a story from years ago..." she said, reminding him of that night in the Megakat Desert when he'd first shown something resembling a romantic interest in his tone of voice, inviting her to MASA for the full story about the Kat Sat 1, before everything had gone so awfully, horribly wrong, for him, for her and for so many others.
"True," Street said. "But that story you already know. The Ci-Kat-A queen rode in her larval state aboard the satellite and with her bite she changed my life forever. This one is new. The tale of how I survived my encounter with those meddling vigilante SWAT Kats."
Despite herself, Ann was interested; like many others, she had wondered what had happened to Street. Except for him, all the kats bitten and converted by the Ci-Kat-A had been accounted four - the three Enforcers killed, the five MASA guards captured and imprisoned for study. But Street's fate after the destruction of the Ci-Kat-A queen's new nest in the Megakat Tower penthouse and the death of the queen herself had remained a mystery... one Street himself was apparently about to explain to his captive audience. And one Ann suspected involved Dr. Viper, given that the converted con guarding the door and his fellow escapees had gone missing in Megakat Swamp, and that her editor had mentioned the mutated biochemist in relation to the Ci-Kat-A attack on the park.
"I was in the queen's new nest, about to bring Deputy Mayor Briggs over to our side, when suddenly something smashed through the glass and hit me in the face. It was one of the SWAT Kats' stupid gimmicky missiles. It had sharp metal arms that wrapped around my face tightly."
Ann realized he was talking about an Octopus Missile; the SWAT Kats used them often enough that the name was mostly common knowledge, especially considering Razor's tendency to announce what missile he was firing. For whose benefit, Ann had never quite been able to figure out. None of this she conveyed to Street; she simply nodded as he continued.
"I sailed across the room and smashed through the window on the opposite side. I plummeted, screaming. I tried to fly, but I couldn't control my momentum, and so I fell. Three-hundred forsaken stories. I fell and fell, flailing, struggling to rip the SWAT Kats' accursed missile off of my face, until at last I landed hard on the cement walkway in front of the building. I lay there, twitching and broken. I'd managed to tear the missile off... leaving me with these ugly entrenched scars on his face. I was dazed and lay on my back, watching as the Enforcers set fire to the penthouse, and with it the eggs! Then I witnessed the SWAT Kats aerial battle with the queen. I lay there, helpless, wounded, powerless to do anything to avert disaster. As I watched my kind's hope for the future literally go up in flames, I managed to summon the strength to crawl to a nearby manhole.
"I lifted the cover and all but fell in, splashing down into the filthy water. I picked myself up and limped along down the tunnel. I don't know how long I wandered the sewers beneath the city, but eventually I found... him. Dr. Viper. He seemed just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He offered to help me, and I accepted, perhaps against my better judgment. We returned to his lair in the Dead Forest, at the heart of Megakat Swamp, to begin plotting our takeover of Megakat City. Of course, our partnership couldn't last forever. His dreams of conquest were pitiful compared to my own." He paused, looking at the other converted kat by the door, then at Ann. "To OUR own," he corrected himself.
"Wh-what do you want with me?!" Ann demanded.
"How forgetful of me! I got so caught up in explaining the past that I forgot to explain the future. You see, Ms. Gora, we Ci-Kat-A can reproduce in one of two ways. The way I was created, and the way I made my friend Murdoch here, or the 'natural' way, through the offspring of a queen!"
"B-But what has that got to do with..." Ann trailed off, eyeing Street's salivating mandibles, remembering her very real fear of being bitten, and all at once the horror washed over her. "Oh no!" she cried. "You can't mean-"
"Oh, but I do!" Street gave her wrists something like an affectionate squeeze. "I can think of no she-kat I wish to make my queen more than you!"
Ann struggled to reason with him. "But, but it still won't be entirely natural... even if you bite me and turn me, it still won't be the same as the original queen!"
Street winced and looked melancholy all of a sudden. Ann couldn't know it, but he was remembering that Viper had said something quite similar to him earlier, when their partnership had ended. "True," he said sadly, "but it'll be good enough. And good enough is all we Ci-Kat-A have left."
Suddenly, despite her fear and horror, Ann found herself feeling the beginnings of pity for Street...
