Edit: Major apologies people...somehow ff.net screwed up my upload and truncated the entire freaking chapter! Apparently it doesn't like links...it jut out everything from the link onward. Very sorry about that...blarg -_-;; Here's the entire thing this time, the whole 3,700 words x_x;
A/N: Yay! I got a non-Tekken review! =D Thank you ebonezer ^_^; And thanks to Knightwing and Cheeb for checking it out, despite the...erm...bizarre crossover ^^;
I admit that I have some interesting creative license going with the appearance of Jake and Chance here; the first picture I've drawn on them is available now on my website. They're taller, and more humanoid in appearance, though their faces stay exactly the same as in the show, other than slightly more anime-ised eyes. I've also taken creative licence with eye colours; Jake has green and Chance has blue. My website is and it caters to anything that interests me at the time...not specific genres. Feel free, at any time, to bug me about putting up fanart or fanfiction, because I really REALLY want other's work up there! ^_^
Oh yeah, and I'll be doing a little plot-retelling at some stage here. For fans of either series involved bear with me...one story will be new, the other will be old news.
Anyhow, on with the story!
***
As the sun rose slowly above the emerald horizon of Megakat City, a glint of sunlight refracted off a piece of scrap metal from the scrap yard just out the front door...at the perfect angle to hit Kazuya in the eye. Closing his eyes, he grunted and rolled over to face away; instead, finding his nose facing the couch back. Unfortunately, as long as he might try staring at it, sleep would not overcome him once more; once he was awake, he was awake.
He sat up and yawned, stretching his arms above his head. With a little extra oomph, he was able to arch his back far enough to make the vertebrae crack into place with sickening volume...whoever said his ability to click some of his joints would result in arthritis was an idiot.
Still a little groggy and disoriented, he forced himself to stand up from the couch and wander over to the window next to the kitchen table, and stared out across the miles of scrap metal as the sun glinted off it...bright light often woke him up fairly well, as it often does to most. Soon enough, he felt awake enough to think straight, and realised he hadn't seen his reflection in ages...and what he'd become. Last time he looked in the mirror, he was an aging Japanese businessman; thick black hair, though it had receded slightly to bear a widow's peak on his forehead, ferocious-looking eyebrows that seemed permanently locked into a frown – they were thicker toward the sides of his face, and spiked upward, almost making one think of him, at first glance, as one of those ancient samurai kinds – and beneath then, cold, obsidian eyes, slanting up slightly at the corners. His high cheekbones and slightly squared-off chin made him seem all the more formidable; the reason only two men in history had attempted to legitimately challenge his authority.
His eyes refocused, and caught the reflection of an unfamiliar visage staring back at him against the window pane. A ginger-brown furred creature stared back at him with a bewildered expression, with thick raven hair sitting on his head in a rather disorderly manner. The eyes were so similar to his own – Japanese-looking, curved up at the corners – but they were sharper and much larger than a human's eyes would be. His still rather prominent cheekbones were hidden entirely by brown fur, which formed two sharp points at each cheek. Despite the fact that the rest of his face had been replaced with a Kat-like muzzle, he still had the overall shape – including the chin. After minutes on end of staring at the reflection, he began to recognise the Kazuya within the beast's visage. Somehow, under all that fur, he was still his old self.
After a moment he glanced back down at his hands. He'd noticed, the night before, that everyone else around had only three fingers and a thumb...he still had four and his thumb. The nails were gone though...and in their place were claw sheaths. He'd discovered the claws last night, of course. With all his fighting experience, he could tell they'd prove more than useful at times.
The movement of feet caught his attention, and he turned his head to glance over his shoulder. He caught the view of a smaller Kat with bright ginger fur and emerald green eyes; 'Razor', he'd called himself. He smiled softly at the sleepy creature.
"'Morning..."
Razor smirked slightly through half-lidded eyes and threw himself at the refrigerator, yanking the door open. "G'morning Kazuya...how'd you sleep?"
He moved from the window, and sat back down on the couch. "Better than I have in years...usually I get two hours if I'm lucky."
Pulling a bottle of milk out with one paw, Razor reached for a cereal box from the cupboard with the other. "Good...today will no doubt be busy." As he plopped both items on the kitchen table, he turned to retrieve a couple of other items. "By the way...I forgot to tell you last night; T-bone and Razor are our aliases...out of uniform, just call me Jake. My buddy's name is Chance."
Kazuya nodded, and ran a hand through his hair. As he did, something crashed down next to him unceremoniously. He recognised the blonde tabby's fur easily; Chance. He chortled deeply to himself. "Chance isn't a morning guy, is he?"
Jake shook his head, smiling, as he brought three bowls and spoons to the table, and sat down. "Nope, never has been. I'm surprised he's actually up yet, considering the time of day."
The smaller ginger-furred Kat motioned for the other to help himself to the breakfast, and Kazuya did just that. He was hungry, after all, since it'd been a while since he'd eaten. Cornflakes weren't really turning him on as far as breakfast went...but it was food nevertheless. After he'd fixed himself an overloaded bowlful, Jake poured himself his share of the cereal, and a decent helping of milk.
Since Chance slept through most of the meal, breakfast was in relative silence. Then again, it was rude to talk with a full mouth, right? At any rate, it was a fast meal, and as the two washed up their dishes, Chance finally woke up and sleepily dug into his meal.
"I'd better find you something to wear other than those boxers, and get you a towel," Jake commented as he put the bowl on the drying rack next to the sink, "Though I doubt any of my clothes will fit you. I'm sure Chance won't mind if I steal something from his drawer."
Kazuya glanced down at his black satin boxers, and sighed. That's all the G-Corporation had left him to wear?! Cheapskates.
Jake returned and dumped a pair of short-sleeved blue overalls in his arms a moment later, along with a fresh towel. "All I could find for now...but hey, you'll probably get 'em dirty negotiating the junkyard anyhow. Shower's down the hall...go for it whenever you're ready."
Now was good, actually...and he nodded once, heading down the hall to clean up.
Chance mumbled something incoherent at Jake as he put his dish in the sink, and prepared to walk off...but ended up yowling in pain a second later. Jake's foot had planted itself down firmly on the tip of his tail. The blonde turned around and snarled at his buddy.
"Chance, I'm not cleaning up your dirty dishes...if you're gonna be lazy, maybe you should get married..."
Sighing, and now rather more awake than before, he complied...after nursing his abused tail for a moment. "I would if I could...but I doubt there are any women that would want to live in a cruddy scrap yard...and as if I can afford somewhere in the city!"
It was true...neither would ever be able to afford something better than this...especially with that debt above their heads for eternity. But with their double careers, it didn't seem as bad...besides, where else would you have free parts pouring in from everywhere?
***
An hour or so later, with the sun rolling higher and higher into the emerald
sky, the three tomkats were out in the scrap yard, just outside the garage.
Chance had made himself comfortable sitting on a pile of old tyres, whilst
Kazuya was sitting on the bonnet of an old wreck...the blue overalls he was
wearing were just a little bit too large on his slender frame. Jake seemed
perfectly happy to sit on the concrete and tinker with yet another invention of
some kind.
"So, are you going to tell us about yourself?" Chance smirked playfully, leaning back in the segmented rubber tube of old wheels.
Pulling his legs up to cross them beneath him, Kazuya smiled back at him...though the smile was strangely dark and subdued, as if it was forced. "Only if I have to."
"You do...unless it's too gory." His smirk widened somewhat, and was still half-serious.
"Well, my past is most definitely rather gory and unpleasant...but it'll make for a good ghost story." This time, the smile was genuine. He sat back, leaning back on his hands. "You ready for a long story?"
Both nodded, and Jake paused in his tinkering for a moment.
"Well I guess I should start from the boring stuff...family. I'm the oldest and only son of Heihachi Mishima...former CEO of the biggest company in Japan."
Jake blinked, then arched a brow. "Japan? That's some place from wherever you came from I'm guessing."
Kazuya nodded. "Yeah, a group of islands off the Asian continent. It had a population of over a hundred thousand when I was born." That caused two pairs of brows to rise, but he continued anyhow. "Anyway, it was apparent even before I was born that he didn't want me around...so instead of getting rid of me, he decided to make my life a living hell from the word go. As soon as I learned to walk he was forcing me to learn the martial arts...Mishima Karate, to be exact...which is notoriously brutal and hard to master. I actually learned fast for a kid...but it was never good enough for him. He decided he'd had enough by the time I was five...and threw me off the top of a cliff."
Jake's eyes nearly rolled out of his head. "A cliff? You mean like a ravine?"
He motioned towards the massive blemish slashing diagonally across his broad chest and stomach. "No, a cliff...as in, one you're supposed to be splattered at the bottom if you fall down...but somehow I survived...but not without a few souvenirs."
"So that's what that scar's from..." Chance, if he weren't covered in fur, would be ashen white at that point. The thought of a mere kitten...no, child; they probably don't have kittens where Kazuya's from...being thrown down a cliff by his own father...sickened him.
"Indeed. Took almost a year to fully heal too. By then he'd adopted a little silver haired street rat to 'replace me', even though I still lived with him." He sighed, drawing his knees up, and wrapped his arms around them. "I had to put up with him and his arrogance along with everything else until I finally left home at eighteen.
"From there there's not too much of interest...trying to find odd jobs anywhere I could...waiter, cashier, apprentice mechanic..."
Chance and Jake exchanged glances.
"...until I was twenty-six. My father decided to start a martial arts tournament, which he called the King of Iron Fist. I participated...the prize was the Mishima Zaibatsu itself. I won it, believe it or not...and threw him over the same cliff he threw me over when I was young.
"From there I transformed the Zaibatsu into the most powerful company in the world...something my idiot of a father never seemed to be able to do, since he never quite studied his employees and their full potential. About a year after I took over the Zaibatsu, I discovered he was alive...and I used the same tactics he used to lure me out...and announced the King of Iron Fist 2.
"It was a much harder tournament to participate in, since there were more competitors...but out of sheer luck, my father won it...and out of sheer spite, he decided to try and get rid of me, once and for all. After knocking me out...he dropped my body into the mouth of a live volcano."
The two tomkats gave him a disbelieving look. "You're joking, right?"
He shook his head. "Nope. He actually did it. I landed on a ledge just above the magma; the poisonous gases and sheer heat actually rendered me medically 'dead'...but a company called the G-Corporation spend around ten years trying to rectify the damage done by the suffocation and the burning...might I add that suffocating is one of the worst ways to die?"
Chance shuddered; Jake, on the other hand, was engrossed in the tale, and was leaning forward for more.
"I finally awoke from the treatment, though I had completely lost my memory. It took me six years to finally remember everything...four years later I'd trained up and hardened myself to the reality of what had happened, and was ready to take on my father for what he did to me...the fourth King of Iron Fist came about when he learned of my presence. Of course, he still wanted me dead after all those years...funny how old hatred never dies.
"In short, I fought and won; thanks to the son I never knew I had. Being dead, so to speak, for at least ten years, sort of stops you from learning of such things. But at any rate, we both fought the old man, and won...from there, nearly ten more years of my running the Zaibatsu ensued, before I collapsed in my office one day...then awoke here. Apparently I caught the Gaidoku virus that's been wreaking havoc on Earth. Looks like Hackle has the cure we've been searching for, too..."
A long silence followed as Kazuya ended his story there. Finally, Chance sighed and sat forward on his perch. "You're right...it was quite gory. I dunno how you've stayed sane all this time."
The raven-haired Kat smirked and shrugged. "Whoever said anything about sane? All I've done is tried to survive. But anyway...now that I've spilled my heart and soul out to the both of you...your turn."
Jake grinned innocently and motioned to Chance...who grinned back in an almost mocking way, and cleared his throat. "Alright then. There's not too much to say about our childhoods compared to yours...except that both of us were both sporty and academic I guess. Jake was obsessed with technology, and I wanted to be a fighter pilot. We both applied to become Enforcers after University; purely by accident, he ended up being my gunman..." Chance motioned with a clawed thumb at the cross-legged tomkat sitting below him. "We had been on several missions before...but the most drastic one was when we had to fight one of the city's greatest enemies...Dark Kat.
"Of course, it was a dogfight. Commander Feral ordered us to break off pursuit, but back then, we were young and hot-headed. We had our weapons locked on him, and no matter how much we were told to pull back, we didn't...as a result of an accident, we lost control of the plane, and ejected...the jet crashed into the brand new Enforcer headquarters, resulting in millions of dollars in damages...needless to say, Feral wasn't one bit impressed.
"In fact," Chance continued with a depressed sigh, "He gave us the bill, kicked us out of the military, and sent us here to this junkyard to somehow pay off the debt. That was quite a few years ago. Instead of becoming bitter and angry though, we both swore revenge on Dark Kat for ruining our careers; Jake noticed that most of the parts thrown in here were junk...but there were a few gems lying about. In fact, we found enough crud to build an entire jet of our own...and eventually other equipment; and, after creating aliases and disguises so Feral wouldn't be able to have a bigger fit over his spilled milk...the SWAT Kats were born."
Kazuya blinked, and smirked slightly. "You know, your lives sound a hell of a lot more interesting than mine."
Again, the two glanced at each other, then for once, Jake spoke. "Well, you said you were an apprentice mechanic...that holds hope for you for a future here. If you don't desperately want to return 'home'...we could always take you on as a third ser of paws here. Heck knows we could use a little help every now and again."
Kazuya snorted with laughter. "Return to Earth...like this? I'd become a science project...again. Besides, there's nothing for me there...and your little rebellious superhero act sounds far more interesting than running that godforsaken Zaibatsu."
***
With a cough of smoke, the engine below him splurted a thick stream of black
oil into Kazuya's face and shirt. This time, instead of yelling and stepping
back...he sighed, and waited for it to stop.
Chance looked over his shoulder at the tall tawny Kat. What a mess...oil all over the place. Maybe he shouldn't have left the old crud-bomb of a vehicle to a rusty mechanic to fix...besides, after the last two months of working with him, Chance had learned that Kazuya wasn't particularly skilled in the mechanical field, and he had limited experience. It was time to help him with the old, broken-down rusted wreck.
"Need an extra paw there?" The look from the obsidian eyes he received for asking, from beneath the covering of dark, thick oil, was enough to kill.
"I can't decide where to start with this thing. I say we rip out the engine and put a new one in."
Chance peeked inside beneath the bonnet, and received a splattering of oil in the face too. "Ugh...well for a start, it could use a new...wait, you're right. But the old lady who owns it can't afford a new engine...we'll have to make do with what we can."
Kazuya sighed and walked back into the garage, grabbing a rag to try and get some of the oil out of his fur.
"You know, for a former businessman, you sure don't react too badly to getting filthy." Chance commented as he began tinkering within the engine, not looking at the other Kat.
Kazuya chuckled as he tried to wipe his face clean. "Being covered in your own blood is worse than oil and brake fluid in my opinion. Besides, it comes out eventually, so there's no need to whine and complain like a little princess."
"Good point. Ah, bingo...here's part of the problem..." Leaning in a little further, Chance fiddled with a few connections lower down, and pulled out a few parts. "We can replace these, and mend a few other components...and this old bomb should last her another year or so, before she's back again...I'm sure Jake will come up with something brilliant to put in their place."
"Speaking of whom, where is he?" Kazuya put the rag aside, though he wasn't satisfied with the state of his ginger fur – still soaked and clogged with the stuff...but he could clean himself up later.
"Down in the hangar I think, coming up with something new."
Rolling his eyes and smiling, Kazuya rejoined Chance at the front of the car.
***
Sitting amongst several piles of paper and metal components was the second SWAT
Kat, contentedly scribbling away on a blueprint with a piece of chalk. It
seemed to be one of many – it also seemed that Jake had something planned.
Chance and Kazuya looked on in silence for a little while as Jake scribbled away happily...the genius looked like a small child with his crayons. It was a while before he spotted the two onlookers, but when he did, he smiled and waved them over.
"Come over here you two, check this out..."
When they did, they found themselves staring at blueprints for an F-22 Raptor look-alike. The perplexed looks Jake received were for completely different reasons; Kazuya had little clue as to what the jet was exactly, and Chance found it difficult to believe there was a need for one. The old Turbokat still served them admirably after all, and it would only be unnecessary work in building an entirely new, more advanced vehicle from scratch, right?
"Uh Jake...what exactly is the point of building another jet?"
He placed aside the papers for the time being, and looked up at his taller buddy. "Chance, we're both pilots, remember? And we can easily train Kazuya to be a second gunman...besides, the Turbokat only fits two."
"Whoa wait, are you sure..."
"Sure of what?"
After a hesitant moment of thought, he glanced at Kazuya. "Are you sure you want to get tied up in this?"
The darker-furred Kat shrugged his broad shoulders. "I have nothing more useful to do. Besides, it sounds like a substantial challenge, and a change from the old. So why not?"
Chance sighed softly, and sat down beside Jake. "Alright, you win...so how are the plans going?"
Grabbing the blueprints again, Jake began pointing out aspects of the new jet. "Well, for a start, she's faster than the Turbokat, and just as agile. With the technology upgrades the Turbokat's been through, and with the new ones we've been working on, we can conserve time and space by throwing it all straight onto the new jet, making it more advanced than the Turbokat by a long shot. It'll also have a higher capacity for missiles and the like, and a more accurate targeting system...so the pilot won't always need a gunman."
On second thought, thought Chance, this could be an awesome plan cookin'. "Sounds good to me. So, when do we start work?"
The smaller Kat grinned to himself as he leafed through a few more pages of plans. "As soon as we've cleared out the back end of the hangar."