Title: Doubletake
Chp 4: The World Gone Mad
Author: Kristen Sharpe
E-Mail: kristensk@fyresight.com
Date: August 5, 2002
Rating: PG
Warnings: May contain slightly more than average violence for a children's cartoon.
Disclaimer: "SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron," its characters and concepts are copyright to Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc and are used without permission.
Author's note: I know, slow again. And, I can't even blame FFN for it because the site's been up for a couple weeks now. Aiy... Yet more all new material here. But, things are finally coming together and moving back toward a rendezvous with my original outline. I know what I'm doing... Really!
----------------------------
Chapter 4: The World Gone Mad
----------------------------
"Well, I stand surprised," Chance announced as he slid himself out from beneath a sleek white Katillac. He stood, balancing a pan of dirty oil in his hands, and looked to his partner expectantly.
"At what?" Jake asked rhetorically, his voice muffled inside the sedan he was servicing. He already knew the answer to his question. It had been on his mind all day too.
"All day and nothing," Chance grumbled, carrying the pan to the barrel he and Jake used for spent oil. "Not from Feral. Not from Callie. I haven't even seen Ann Gora on the tube." He emptied the oil into the barrel's waiting funnel. Then, he thumped the now-empty pan onto the barrel's lid in frustration and turned to Jake. "Maybe we should call Callie for a change."
"Couldn't hurt," Jake agreed. He obligingly fished in a pocket for his communicator. It wasn't there. "Oh, yeah," he withdrew his hand, "Mine's down in the hangar. I was making some modifications."
Chance rolled his eyes. "*More*?"
"They're improvements," Jake assured.
Chance thought ruefully as he pulled out his own communicator and punched the button to open the channel. Maybe Jake had forgotten, but *he* still remembered the test of the "new and improved" glovatrix grappling hook. A phantom pang shoot through his tailbone at the thought.
Then, the pain-laced memory was forgotten as Callie's voice came over the communicator.
"SWAT Kats." Her voice was toneless, empty. For the briefest of moments, Chance even doubted that it *was* Callie Briggs.
"Yes, Miss Briggs," he managed after a moment, "We were wondering..."
She broke into his sentence in such a flat voice that the tabby continued talking over her for a fraction of a second, her monotone drowned beneath his deeper voice.
"...have seen the truth. So, don't expect any help from me." There was a pause so silent the sound of Chance's jaw hitting the floor could have been heard, if it had been physically capable of reaching so far. "And, please...," her voice faltered, emotion cracking through the banausic wall, "please don't call me... ever again."
With that, the comlink in Chance's hand lapsed into static.
He didn't notice.
For the second time that day, Chance and Jake just stared at each other in slack-jawed astonishment. Quite frankly, something was more than wrong. Something, somewhere in the basic functionings of the way things are, had simply gone mad.
----------------------------------------------------
Commander Feral, for once, was thinking along the same lines as Chance and Jake were. But, from the standpoint of one far more at home with cynicism. He frequently managed to balance astonishment and suspicion in a healthy union. It was the second cardinal rule of managing law and order in a place like MegaKat City. The first was remembering that nothing was ever entirely what it seemed... and if it was, it probably meant that the furnace of Hades had been blown into oblivion.
That in mind, Feral settled his immoderate frame into a large easy chair. Moodily, he stared across his apartment as the soft strains of some Classical piece he'd yet to learn the name of filtered past his ears.
Despite claiming to be tone deaf, the Enforcer Commander found something about Classical music helped him to think. And, his niece, desperate for birthday and Christmas presents that were anything *but* new black batons, had been adding to his collection steadily for four years.
So, with a melancholy violin at his back and a generous shaker full of proverbial salt in figurative hand, Feral mentally re-examined every detail of the fateful Council meeting. But, no matter how he twisted it, he could see no way for the Deputy Mayor to escape her own words. She couldn't very well agree to whatever anti-SWAT Kat program the Council had in mind and then turn around and continue to support the vigilantes - much as the Council deserved a taste of their own medicine - without the Council noticing and taking action quickly.
So, was Callie stalling for time?
Time for what?
She certainly couldn't be serious!
Could she?
And, if she was, *why*? Why now? Why so suddenly?
Feral's mind spun in ever-tightening circles as he brought the last few days' chaotic events together in his mind and searched for any details he might have overlooked. But, no matter how many or how distant a tangent he followed, he always came back to the same seemingly unimportant twenty minutes in time.
The video.
His own stolen video. What about it was bothering him so much? Well, beyond the obvious... No, there was something about it. Some detail he'd missed. A single scene perhaps? Had Callie Briggs seen something she'd never known before? Something in the background that had meant nothing to him? And, given the looks on their faces, had the Council known about it beforehand? How?
The more Feral thought, the more his head hurt. At last, the Commander made a mental note to find the copy of the video he'd kept at Headquarters and watch it again. Maybe then he'd get some answers. He certainly needed them. And, he needed them soon. If he waited too long in revealing the truth of the SWAT Kats' whereabouts on the night of the theft, there would be questions about just *why* he'd waited.
A growl of a yawn stretched his face seemingly twice its normal size. It was definitely time for bed, even if he still had no answers. Standing to stretch, Feral turned his head toward the apartment's bank of windows to see that the sky beyond had made the transition from evening's crimson to the unnaturally vermillion tinted darkness of a MegaKat City night.
Well, the video could at least wait until morning. Now, if the city's apparently sleepless criminals would let him, he was going to bed. Finally, after thirty-six straight waking hours. And, Heaven help whoever roused him early for anything shy of imminent nuclear oblivion.
---------------------------------------------------
While Feral and many of its other citizens found rest, MegaKat City as a whole never truly slept. A steady flow of traffic held the roadways in constant motion. Interstates endlessly routed travellers in and out of the city in ceaseless tides. The day workers flowed out on one tide while those who worked, and played, through the night rode in on another. Cleaning and maintenance staffs came out as the sun melted away beyond the horizon, ready to do work that would have interfered with the day's bustle earlier. Nightlife glowed into gaudy brilliance, setting the streets ablaze in a neon rainbow. And, always, always in a city like MegaKat, some of what flowed in on the tides was decidedly virulent.
A car slid neatly into a parking space just a block from Enforcer Headquarters. Before the engine had barely begun to quiet, the large kat behind the wheel had flung his door open.
"Hope yer right about this bein' easy," the large tom grumbled, sliding out of the car his partner had hotwired for them. As his bare feet touched the roadway, still warm from a day in the summer sun, a gusting wind clawed at his clothes. The tomkat tugged his ill-fitting and ill-gotten trenchcoat tighter around himself. It was far too small for his broad-shouldered frame but a better alternative than being seen in the G-suit he wore beneath. At least... for now.
His companion had moved to stand in front of the car, his own stolen trenchcoat swirling around him. The smaller tom's eyes locked on the imposing shape of Enforcer Headquarters as he settled an over-sized duffel bag onto the car's hood.
"Oh, it will be, T-Bone," he murmured.
T-Bone, once Chance Furlong, now more consumed by his SWAT Kat alias than even he wanted to acknowledge, shot a glance at his partner. That cold, thin smile was parting Razor's lips again. A smile apparently born somewhere in the netherworld of cryostasis. T-Bone knew he'd never seen it before their recent awakening. Some of his memories had become distorted over the decade he'd spent in coldsleep, but he was sure he'd have remembered something like that. It sent a chill through him every time he saw it.
The tabby shouldered the thought aside, his tail flicking once in a twitch of agitation. "Come on," he snapped, pulling a wide-brimmed hat from the car to cover his masked and helmeted head.
Razor nodded and lifted the bulky duffel bag he'd been resting on the car onto one well-muscled shoulder. "They won't know what hit them."
The twosome moved forward confidently. Assured that here, in a world where the SWAT Kats were considered heroes even among some Enforcers, their plan would come as a complete surprise. Probably the last surprise they'd be able to savor. But, that was alright. By the time the night's mission was over, they'd be well-armed, and the reputations of the two kats that had unknowingly left them for dead in the void between universes would be well on their way to ruin.
---------------------------------------------------
Jake was pacing restlessly between the coffee table and T.V. Back and forth. Back and forth. The rhythm was mimicked by the nervous switching of his tail. Abruptly, he stopped and spun on his heel to face the slumped figure of his friend on the couch. His right hand shot out in a triumphant point.
"The comlink picked up someone else."
Chance arched a brow and lifted his head from its resting place against his hand. "She addressed us as 'SWAT Kats' from the start. A stranger wouldn't have known."
Jake groaned and flailed impotently at the air with both arms. "Well, do *you* have any ideas on what's going on here?!"
"Alternate dimension," Chance threw out.
"Can't be." Jake shook his head as he dropped onto the couch cushion by his larger friend. "Nothing even vaguely bizarre enough to transport us to another dimension has happened today."
"I fell asleep on the couch while watching 'Scaredy Kat,' and this is a nightmare brought on by bad tuna."
With a thoughtful face, Jake reached out to pinch the nearest of his partner's tiger-striped arms.
"YE-OW!" Chance roared. "Okay, okay! It's not a dream!"
"Baby."
"Shut up. I'm havin' a bad day."
Jake sighed. "You and me both, buddy." He stared at the silent floor for a long moment. "Chance, I think we should go check on her..."
There was a blur of motion to his left. Jake blinked as his cheek fur gusted in a sudden, short wind.
"Chance?"
"What's keepin' ya'?!" Chance called back, already climbing down the hatch to the hangar.
---------------------------------------------------
"I told you that thing was overkill!" T-Bone bellowed into his shorter partner's tattered ears over the shrill scream of countless alarms.
Razor just smirked, resting the bazooka he'd concealed in his duffel bag on his shoulder. "It got the hangar doors open, didn't it?"
"Not open enough!" T-Bone barked.
Razor started to growl a retort. Then, he stiffened, looking back at the double doors that sealed the Enforcer hangar. "Crud!"
T-Bone saw it too. But, there was nothing to do but watch in frustrated fury as a security override kicked in and brought what remained of the leading edges of the twin doors together. Now, a wall of steel barred the Dark SWAT Kats' escape. Albeit a wall with a gaping hole, but a wall nonetheless.
T-Bone started to hurl a fresh curse at Razor. His inchoate expletive was abruptly interrupted.
"Hold it right there!"
Both SWAT Kats whirled around, levelling their glovatrixes in the direction of the voice.
Enforcers were pouring into the hangar from the doors that led to the levels below. Not a few were yelling the usual instructions to come along quietly that no criminal of the two Dark SWAT Kats' temperament would ever follow.
Something T-Bone aptly demonstrated by unleashing a volley of Mini-Megatons in the direction of the incoming Enforcers.
"Look out!"
"Get down!"
Enforcers scrambled for cover behind any piece of equipment large enough to offer shelter and not loaded with anything likely to go up in a fireball. The explosives detonated around them, momentarily throwing them into chaos.
"Are you crazy?!" Razor screamed, grabbing his partner's arm and digging his claws in forcefully. "You could blow us all to kingdom come usin' those things in here!"
T-Bone hissed and rammed his elbow back into Razor's jaw hard enough to send the smaller kat stumbling back. "That hurt!"
"I don't care!" Razor forced the words out around his aching jaw as he regained his balance. "We don't have time for this! If those other SWAT Kats show up, it'll ruin everything!" Still glaring at his partner, he fired several Tar-pedoes in the Enforcers' direction to keep them ducking.
"They'll never know! Nyeir* made sure there's no one to tell them," T-Bone snapped, also re-focusing his attention on their attackers. His eyes scanned the room for a viable way to get the jet they'd loaded out of the hangar.
Razor was as well, and he saw no options. "Let's just take a jet from the runway outside and blow this joint!"
"Those things only carry five lousy missiles! We're takin' the jet we loaded," T-Bone growled as he fired a few more Mini-Megatons at the regrouping Enforcers, more cautiously this time. "Give that door all you've got with the bazooka, then go get the jet started."
For once abandoning a snappy retort to T-Bone's taking command, Razor hurried to reload his bazooka. He could hear his partner trading fire, and insults, with the Enforcers behind him as he slid a fresh missile into place and hefted the bazooka onto his shoulder. Thus far, they had only had the relatively small night shift to deal with, but Commander Feral and reenforcements probably weren't far behind.
---------------------------------------------------
Commander Feral was, in fact, groggily trying to understand what the kat on the other end of the phone was telling him. He was usually frighteningly alert at obscene hours of the night or morning, but not tonight. What's more, he was reasonably sure the call was some sort of tactile dream. It had to be. Because there was no other explanation for a young sentry to be breathlessly informing him that swamp bats had invaded the hangar.
Unless, of course, that blasted Viper was back. Maybe he should ask if they were *mutated* swamp bats. Otherwise, pest control wasn't his job....
"Commander, can you hear me?" the urgent voice broke over his thoughts anew. "The SWAT Kats are...."
SWAT Kats?!
Feral sat up in bed so fast he nearly gave himself a bad case of whiplash. And, no less than 20.6 seconds later, he was what he considered to be sufficiently clothed and setting a new land speed record out the door.
---------------------------------------------------
The hole in the hangar doors was bigger but not nearly big enough. Razor swore and raced to the waiting jet. It wasn't hard to find. It was alone of its kind in the hangar, a sharp-edged modern vehicle with short stubby wings. It was an odd bird for an Enforcer jet, but what interested the SWAT Kats was its missile bay, capable of carrying a much greater payload than the older jet's missile rails.
As he vaulted to the access ladder and hauled himself up to the cockpit, Razor felt some niggling scrap of memory. He should have seen or heard of this new Enforcer jet before. But, the decade he'd spent in suspended animation had stolen any such trivial detail from his memory.
No matter.
His hands moved over the controls, finding an auxiliary startup sequence accessible from the weapons officer's seat. By the time the engine had ignited, he was already calling up the weapons array.
He'd know what the jet could do in a minute.
Lieutenant Felina Feral couldn't quite believe it was real. The SWAT Kats stealing a jet from Enforcer Headquarters? She trading fire with them?
--This's nuts.--
Felina peered out from behind the rolling toolbox she was using as a shield.
"T-Bone, have you lost your mind?!" she railed.
The big tom spun in her direction and sent something hurtling toward her. Felina ducked just as the projectile hit her shield with a solid 'thunk.' After a moment's pause, she hesitantly craned her neck out to see what it was.
A two inch long serrated blade was firmly embedded in the toolbox.
"Okay... Guess that answers that question," the dark-haired she-kat muttered.
Then, the roar of a jet's ignition suddenly filled the hangar. SWAT Kat and Enforcers alike looked to see the jet turning toward them slowly. T-Bone immediately began to make a retreat for it. Realizing his intentions, several Enforcers moved to cut him off. A spray of laser fire from the jet interrupted their charge, burning a line across the metal floor between them and the fleeing SWAT Kat. The Enforcers were forced to dive for cover again.
T-Bone, meanwhile, lunged for the jet, hands wrapping around one of the upper rungs of the access ladder. "Blast the door open!" he screamed to his partner as he threw himself into the cockpit.
As the jet began to rotate to face the hangar doors, a fresh wave of Enforcers rushed in. At their head was Commander Feral himself.
But, there was nothing he could do to prevent the inevitable.
Inside the jet, the two darker versions of the SWAT Kats traded a smirk at the sight of Feral. Razor squeezed the firing button.
Feral, who had long since grasped their plan, still only had time to scream, "Get down!" before the missile impacted on the hangar doors.
As the metal disintegrated into fiery shrapnel, the SWAT Kats' jet leapt forward. The backward swept wings cleared the opening with only one barely nicking the door's remnants in a spray of sparks.
They were free.
Momentarily.
T-Bone had taken note of the positions of the only two jets out on the airstrip earlier. His path *should* have been clear. Now, it was barred by two waiting helicopters, hovering just above the tarmac.
But, T-Bone never hesitated. As Razor opened fire with the lasers, he aimed for the open sky beyond Feral's reenforcements. The helicopters swung aside to avoid the firepower, and T-Bone saw his chance. With a whoop of triumph, he slammed the throttle forward and sent the jet hurtling through the tiny opening.
They were free. And, nothing could stop them now.
Commander Feral raced out onto the runway in time to find his pilots fighting for control in the backwash of the jet's passing. The only sign of the SWAT Kats was the harsh laughter still reverberating over the Enforcer band.
---------------------------------------------------
To Be Continued....
* - This is not a typo. What is it? I'm not telling you yet. Mwahahaaaaa!
Yeah, I know... I probably didn't clear up any questions you had from the last chapter. But, I'm getting to it!
And, yet another thanks to all of you readers. (And, all things with sugar are quite acceptable, Skybright! Just no nuts. Can't have something with nutritional value in with my junkfood.) A really big thanks this time out to Sage for playing beta reader, consultant and "person who lets me rant about being stuck, knowing full well that I'll probably un-stick myself over the course of the rant before she can get a word in edgewise."
Chp 4: The World Gone Mad
Author: Kristen Sharpe
E-Mail: kristensk@fyresight.com
Date: August 5, 2002
Rating: PG
Warnings: May contain slightly more than average violence for a children's cartoon.
Disclaimer: "SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron," its characters and concepts are copyright to Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc and are used without permission.
Author's note: I know, slow again. And, I can't even blame FFN for it because the site's been up for a couple weeks now. Aiy... Yet more all new material here. But, things are finally coming together and moving back toward a rendezvous with my original outline. I know what I'm doing... Really!
----------------------------
Chapter 4: The World Gone Mad
----------------------------
"Well, I stand surprised," Chance announced as he slid himself out from beneath a sleek white Katillac. He stood, balancing a pan of dirty oil in his hands, and looked to his partner expectantly.
"At what?" Jake asked rhetorically, his voice muffled inside the sedan he was servicing. He already knew the answer to his question. It had been on his mind all day too.
"All day and nothing," Chance grumbled, carrying the pan to the barrel he and Jake used for spent oil. "Not from Feral. Not from Callie. I haven't even seen Ann Gora on the tube." He emptied the oil into the barrel's waiting funnel. Then, he thumped the now-empty pan onto the barrel's lid in frustration and turned to Jake. "Maybe we should call Callie for a change."
"Couldn't hurt," Jake agreed. He obligingly fished in a pocket for his communicator. It wasn't there. "Oh, yeah," he withdrew his hand, "Mine's down in the hangar. I was making some modifications."
Chance rolled his eyes. "*More*?"
"They're improvements," Jake assured.
Chance thought ruefully as he pulled out his own communicator and punched the button to open the channel. Maybe Jake had forgotten, but *he* still remembered the test of the "new and improved" glovatrix grappling hook. A phantom pang shoot through his tailbone at the thought.
Then, the pain-laced memory was forgotten as Callie's voice came over the communicator.
"SWAT Kats." Her voice was toneless, empty. For the briefest of moments, Chance even doubted that it *was* Callie Briggs.
"Yes, Miss Briggs," he managed after a moment, "We were wondering..."
She broke into his sentence in such a flat voice that the tabby continued talking over her for a fraction of a second, her monotone drowned beneath his deeper voice.
"...have seen the truth. So, don't expect any help from me." There was a pause so silent the sound of Chance's jaw hitting the floor could have been heard, if it had been physically capable of reaching so far. "And, please...," her voice faltered, emotion cracking through the banausic wall, "please don't call me... ever again."
With that, the comlink in Chance's hand lapsed into static.
He didn't notice.
For the second time that day, Chance and Jake just stared at each other in slack-jawed astonishment. Quite frankly, something was more than wrong. Something, somewhere in the basic functionings of the way things are, had simply gone mad.
----------------------------------------------------
Commander Feral, for once, was thinking along the same lines as Chance and Jake were. But, from the standpoint of one far more at home with cynicism. He frequently managed to balance astonishment and suspicion in a healthy union. It was the second cardinal rule of managing law and order in a place like MegaKat City. The first was remembering that nothing was ever entirely what it seemed... and if it was, it probably meant that the furnace of Hades had been blown into oblivion.
That in mind, Feral settled his immoderate frame into a large easy chair. Moodily, he stared across his apartment as the soft strains of some Classical piece he'd yet to learn the name of filtered past his ears.
Despite claiming to be tone deaf, the Enforcer Commander found something about Classical music helped him to think. And, his niece, desperate for birthday and Christmas presents that were anything *but* new black batons, had been adding to his collection steadily for four years.
So, with a melancholy violin at his back and a generous shaker full of proverbial salt in figurative hand, Feral mentally re-examined every detail of the fateful Council meeting. But, no matter how he twisted it, he could see no way for the Deputy Mayor to escape her own words. She couldn't very well agree to whatever anti-SWAT Kat program the Council had in mind and then turn around and continue to support the vigilantes - much as the Council deserved a taste of their own medicine - without the Council noticing and taking action quickly.
So, was Callie stalling for time?
Time for what?
She certainly couldn't be serious!
Could she?
And, if she was, *why*? Why now? Why so suddenly?
Feral's mind spun in ever-tightening circles as he brought the last few days' chaotic events together in his mind and searched for any details he might have overlooked. But, no matter how many or how distant a tangent he followed, he always came back to the same seemingly unimportant twenty minutes in time.
The video.
His own stolen video. What about it was bothering him so much? Well, beyond the obvious... No, there was something about it. Some detail he'd missed. A single scene perhaps? Had Callie Briggs seen something she'd never known before? Something in the background that had meant nothing to him? And, given the looks on their faces, had the Council known about it beforehand? How?
The more Feral thought, the more his head hurt. At last, the Commander made a mental note to find the copy of the video he'd kept at Headquarters and watch it again. Maybe then he'd get some answers. He certainly needed them. And, he needed them soon. If he waited too long in revealing the truth of the SWAT Kats' whereabouts on the night of the theft, there would be questions about just *why* he'd waited.
A growl of a yawn stretched his face seemingly twice its normal size. It was definitely time for bed, even if he still had no answers. Standing to stretch, Feral turned his head toward the apartment's bank of windows to see that the sky beyond had made the transition from evening's crimson to the unnaturally vermillion tinted darkness of a MegaKat City night.
Well, the video could at least wait until morning. Now, if the city's apparently sleepless criminals would let him, he was going to bed. Finally, after thirty-six straight waking hours. And, Heaven help whoever roused him early for anything shy of imminent nuclear oblivion.
---------------------------------------------------
While Feral and many of its other citizens found rest, MegaKat City as a whole never truly slept. A steady flow of traffic held the roadways in constant motion. Interstates endlessly routed travellers in and out of the city in ceaseless tides. The day workers flowed out on one tide while those who worked, and played, through the night rode in on another. Cleaning and maintenance staffs came out as the sun melted away beyond the horizon, ready to do work that would have interfered with the day's bustle earlier. Nightlife glowed into gaudy brilliance, setting the streets ablaze in a neon rainbow. And, always, always in a city like MegaKat, some of what flowed in on the tides was decidedly virulent.
A car slid neatly into a parking space just a block from Enforcer Headquarters. Before the engine had barely begun to quiet, the large kat behind the wheel had flung his door open.
"Hope yer right about this bein' easy," the large tom grumbled, sliding out of the car his partner had hotwired for them. As his bare feet touched the roadway, still warm from a day in the summer sun, a gusting wind clawed at his clothes. The tomkat tugged his ill-fitting and ill-gotten trenchcoat tighter around himself. It was far too small for his broad-shouldered frame but a better alternative than being seen in the G-suit he wore beneath. At least... for now.
His companion had moved to stand in front of the car, his own stolen trenchcoat swirling around him. The smaller tom's eyes locked on the imposing shape of Enforcer Headquarters as he settled an over-sized duffel bag onto the car's hood.
"Oh, it will be, T-Bone," he murmured.
T-Bone, once Chance Furlong, now more consumed by his SWAT Kat alias than even he wanted to acknowledge, shot a glance at his partner. That cold, thin smile was parting Razor's lips again. A smile apparently born somewhere in the netherworld of cryostasis. T-Bone knew he'd never seen it before their recent awakening. Some of his memories had become distorted over the decade he'd spent in coldsleep, but he was sure he'd have remembered something like that. It sent a chill through him every time he saw it.
The tabby shouldered the thought aside, his tail flicking once in a twitch of agitation. "Come on," he snapped, pulling a wide-brimmed hat from the car to cover his masked and helmeted head.
Razor nodded and lifted the bulky duffel bag he'd been resting on the car onto one well-muscled shoulder. "They won't know what hit them."
The twosome moved forward confidently. Assured that here, in a world where the SWAT Kats were considered heroes even among some Enforcers, their plan would come as a complete surprise. Probably the last surprise they'd be able to savor. But, that was alright. By the time the night's mission was over, they'd be well-armed, and the reputations of the two kats that had unknowingly left them for dead in the void between universes would be well on their way to ruin.
---------------------------------------------------
Jake was pacing restlessly between the coffee table and T.V. Back and forth. Back and forth. The rhythm was mimicked by the nervous switching of his tail. Abruptly, he stopped and spun on his heel to face the slumped figure of his friend on the couch. His right hand shot out in a triumphant point.
"The comlink picked up someone else."
Chance arched a brow and lifted his head from its resting place against his hand. "She addressed us as 'SWAT Kats' from the start. A stranger wouldn't have known."
Jake groaned and flailed impotently at the air with both arms. "Well, do *you* have any ideas on what's going on here?!"
"Alternate dimension," Chance threw out.
"Can't be." Jake shook his head as he dropped onto the couch cushion by his larger friend. "Nothing even vaguely bizarre enough to transport us to another dimension has happened today."
"I fell asleep on the couch while watching 'Scaredy Kat,' and this is a nightmare brought on by bad tuna."
With a thoughtful face, Jake reached out to pinch the nearest of his partner's tiger-striped arms.
"YE-OW!" Chance roared. "Okay, okay! It's not a dream!"
"Baby."
"Shut up. I'm havin' a bad day."
Jake sighed. "You and me both, buddy." He stared at the silent floor for a long moment. "Chance, I think we should go check on her..."
There was a blur of motion to his left. Jake blinked as his cheek fur gusted in a sudden, short wind.
"Chance?"
"What's keepin' ya'?!" Chance called back, already climbing down the hatch to the hangar.
---------------------------------------------------
"I told you that thing was overkill!" T-Bone bellowed into his shorter partner's tattered ears over the shrill scream of countless alarms.
Razor just smirked, resting the bazooka he'd concealed in his duffel bag on his shoulder. "It got the hangar doors open, didn't it?"
"Not open enough!" T-Bone barked.
Razor started to growl a retort. Then, he stiffened, looking back at the double doors that sealed the Enforcer hangar. "Crud!"
T-Bone saw it too. But, there was nothing to do but watch in frustrated fury as a security override kicked in and brought what remained of the leading edges of the twin doors together. Now, a wall of steel barred the Dark SWAT Kats' escape. Albeit a wall with a gaping hole, but a wall nonetheless.
T-Bone started to hurl a fresh curse at Razor. His inchoate expletive was abruptly interrupted.
"Hold it right there!"
Both SWAT Kats whirled around, levelling their glovatrixes in the direction of the voice.
Enforcers were pouring into the hangar from the doors that led to the levels below. Not a few were yelling the usual instructions to come along quietly that no criminal of the two Dark SWAT Kats' temperament would ever follow.
Something T-Bone aptly demonstrated by unleashing a volley of Mini-Megatons in the direction of the incoming Enforcers.
"Look out!"
"Get down!"
Enforcers scrambled for cover behind any piece of equipment large enough to offer shelter and not loaded with anything likely to go up in a fireball. The explosives detonated around them, momentarily throwing them into chaos.
"Are you crazy?!" Razor screamed, grabbing his partner's arm and digging his claws in forcefully. "You could blow us all to kingdom come usin' those things in here!"
T-Bone hissed and rammed his elbow back into Razor's jaw hard enough to send the smaller kat stumbling back. "That hurt!"
"I don't care!" Razor forced the words out around his aching jaw as he regained his balance. "We don't have time for this! If those other SWAT Kats show up, it'll ruin everything!" Still glaring at his partner, he fired several Tar-pedoes in the Enforcers' direction to keep them ducking.
"They'll never know! Nyeir* made sure there's no one to tell them," T-Bone snapped, also re-focusing his attention on their attackers. His eyes scanned the room for a viable way to get the jet they'd loaded out of the hangar.
Razor was as well, and he saw no options. "Let's just take a jet from the runway outside and blow this joint!"
"Those things only carry five lousy missiles! We're takin' the jet we loaded," T-Bone growled as he fired a few more Mini-Megatons at the regrouping Enforcers, more cautiously this time. "Give that door all you've got with the bazooka, then go get the jet started."
For once abandoning a snappy retort to T-Bone's taking command, Razor hurried to reload his bazooka. He could hear his partner trading fire, and insults, with the Enforcers behind him as he slid a fresh missile into place and hefted the bazooka onto his shoulder. Thus far, they had only had the relatively small night shift to deal with, but Commander Feral and reenforcements probably weren't far behind.
---------------------------------------------------
Commander Feral was, in fact, groggily trying to understand what the kat on the other end of the phone was telling him. He was usually frighteningly alert at obscene hours of the night or morning, but not tonight. What's more, he was reasonably sure the call was some sort of tactile dream. It had to be. Because there was no other explanation for a young sentry to be breathlessly informing him that swamp bats had invaded the hangar.
Unless, of course, that blasted Viper was back. Maybe he should ask if they were *mutated* swamp bats. Otherwise, pest control wasn't his job....
"Commander, can you hear me?" the urgent voice broke over his thoughts anew. "The SWAT Kats are...."
SWAT Kats?!
Feral sat up in bed so fast he nearly gave himself a bad case of whiplash. And, no less than 20.6 seconds later, he was what he considered to be sufficiently clothed and setting a new land speed record out the door.
---------------------------------------------------
The hole in the hangar doors was bigger but not nearly big enough. Razor swore and raced to the waiting jet. It wasn't hard to find. It was alone of its kind in the hangar, a sharp-edged modern vehicle with short stubby wings. It was an odd bird for an Enforcer jet, but what interested the SWAT Kats was its missile bay, capable of carrying a much greater payload than the older jet's missile rails.
As he vaulted to the access ladder and hauled himself up to the cockpit, Razor felt some niggling scrap of memory. He should have seen or heard of this new Enforcer jet before. But, the decade he'd spent in suspended animation had stolen any such trivial detail from his memory.
No matter.
His hands moved over the controls, finding an auxiliary startup sequence accessible from the weapons officer's seat. By the time the engine had ignited, he was already calling up the weapons array.
He'd know what the jet could do in a minute.
Lieutenant Felina Feral couldn't quite believe it was real. The SWAT Kats stealing a jet from Enforcer Headquarters? She trading fire with them?
--This's nuts.--
Felina peered out from behind the rolling toolbox she was using as a shield.
"T-Bone, have you lost your mind?!" she railed.
The big tom spun in her direction and sent something hurtling toward her. Felina ducked just as the projectile hit her shield with a solid 'thunk.' After a moment's pause, she hesitantly craned her neck out to see what it was.
A two inch long serrated blade was firmly embedded in the toolbox.
"Okay... Guess that answers that question," the dark-haired she-kat muttered.
Then, the roar of a jet's ignition suddenly filled the hangar. SWAT Kat and Enforcers alike looked to see the jet turning toward them slowly. T-Bone immediately began to make a retreat for it. Realizing his intentions, several Enforcers moved to cut him off. A spray of laser fire from the jet interrupted their charge, burning a line across the metal floor between them and the fleeing SWAT Kat. The Enforcers were forced to dive for cover again.
T-Bone, meanwhile, lunged for the jet, hands wrapping around one of the upper rungs of the access ladder. "Blast the door open!" he screamed to his partner as he threw himself into the cockpit.
As the jet began to rotate to face the hangar doors, a fresh wave of Enforcers rushed in. At their head was Commander Feral himself.
But, there was nothing he could do to prevent the inevitable.
Inside the jet, the two darker versions of the SWAT Kats traded a smirk at the sight of Feral. Razor squeezed the firing button.
Feral, who had long since grasped their plan, still only had time to scream, "Get down!" before the missile impacted on the hangar doors.
As the metal disintegrated into fiery shrapnel, the SWAT Kats' jet leapt forward. The backward swept wings cleared the opening with only one barely nicking the door's remnants in a spray of sparks.
They were free.
Momentarily.
T-Bone had taken note of the positions of the only two jets out on the airstrip earlier. His path *should* have been clear. Now, it was barred by two waiting helicopters, hovering just above the tarmac.
But, T-Bone never hesitated. As Razor opened fire with the lasers, he aimed for the open sky beyond Feral's reenforcements. The helicopters swung aside to avoid the firepower, and T-Bone saw his chance. With a whoop of triumph, he slammed the throttle forward and sent the jet hurtling through the tiny opening.
They were free. And, nothing could stop them now.
Commander Feral raced out onto the runway in time to find his pilots fighting for control in the backwash of the jet's passing. The only sign of the SWAT Kats was the harsh laughter still reverberating over the Enforcer band.
---------------------------------------------------
To Be Continued....
* - This is not a typo. What is it? I'm not telling you yet. Mwahahaaaaa!
Yeah, I know... I probably didn't clear up any questions you had from the last chapter. But, I'm getting to it!
And, yet another thanks to all of you readers. (And, all things with sugar are quite acceptable, Skybright! Just no nuts. Can't have something with nutritional value in with my junkfood.) A really big thanks this time out to Sage for playing beta reader, consultant and "person who lets me rant about being stuck, knowing full well that I'll probably un-stick myself over the course of the rant before she can get a word in edgewise."