Chris gazed with un-seeing eyes at the tv glowing in front of her. She was
sprawled across the couch and GOD was she bored. While Jake and Chance
were outside working on a truck that had just come in she had read the
newspaper (and was a little frightened to see a grainy picture of her
splashed across the front page, apparently from Enforcers HQ security
cameras), flipped through all the TV guides, expired parts order catalogs,
and greasy magazines in the house, twice. Now she was left to watch bad
daytime TV. If every Enforcer in the city weren't looking for her she
would be out riding Horse, or watching a movie or something. She felt like
she was on house arrest, and with a picture of her released she was going
to be stuck here for a long time.
She sighed and reached for the remote resting on the coffee table. She had to tug on it slightly to free it from the sticky reside left by a hundred spilled soda's from ages past. She wrinkled her nose and whipped the remote off on her jeans, it was also a sticky gross mess.
She tossed it back onto the table and went into the kitchen where she found a washrag. She dampened it in the sink then returned to the living room. She pushed the various TV guides and magazines off the table and scrubbed the table as best she could. She did the same to the remote then stacked the magazines neatly on the table.
Returning to the kitchen she noticed that the table was also a sticky mess. She shoved the scattered objects on the table off the table onto a chair then scrubbed the table clean. Sorting through the objects on the chair she found newspapers going a month back, two forks, a steak knife, a greasy rag, and a wrench. She threw the newspapers and the rag away, washed the knife and the forks, and put the wrench back on the table. She sarcastically thought it made a nice center piece.
An hour and a half later she had vacuumed the entire bottom story of the house, and the upstairs hallway. The upstairs and downstairs bathrooms were spotless, three sticky drawers in the kitchen were fixed, the squeaky closet door was oiled, and the kitchen was swept. In the closet she found a basket of dusty cleaning supplies with a small handwritten card saying "Dear Chance, hope this helps to keep the new house clean, Love Mom." Nothing in the basket had ever been opened.
Armed with these supplies she spent another hour and a half cleaning the oven and microwave, mopping the kitchen floor, spraying Pledge on every piece of wood furniture in the house and scrubbing until she could see her reflection, and spraying Febreze everywhere in hopes to get the stale smell out.
The house was cleaner then it had ever been (with the exception of Chances room, she didn't feel comfortable clean out his personal space and figured it might bother him too. Jakes room was already fairly clean). It wasn't that she was a clean freak by any means, she just needed something to do and felt that it would be nice to fix up the house for the two kat's who were putting they're tails on the line for a she-kat they barley know. To her, they were modern knights. So the house was clean and Chris was bored again.
She wandered outside and found an old storage shed. She let herself in and started pawing through the various items enclosed within. She found a small tub of spackle(1) that wasn't quite dried out yet and used it to fill in a large crack in the wall above the couch. Stepping back to survey her handiwork she noted that the crack was gone, but the bright white of the spackle didn't match the off-white color of the wall.
Back in the storage shed she found a half-gallon of paint that she hoped would match the wall color. She found a drop cloth and a paint brush and carried the bundle back into the house. She spread the cloth over the couch (she didn't feel like moving it and was a little afraid of what she might find underneath), then realized she didn't have screw driver to open the paint with. She went to her rig and returned with a screwdriver as well as her Pat Benatar CD. She shoved the CD in the mechanics CD player and hit play.
As she stood on the couch and started to paint her favorite song, "Invincible" came on. (2)
"We cant a afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It's a do-or-die situation
We will be invincible!
And with the power of conviction
There is no sacrifice!
It's a do-or-die situation!
We will be invincible!"
She turned up the volume and started bouncing around on the couch swiping madly about with the paint brush to the rhythm of the music. When she had finished covering the spackle she jumped off the couch over the coffee table and started touching up marks and scratches in the wall, dancing and singing all the while.
Just then the door opened and in walked Chance immediately followed by Jake. Chris threw the paintbrush onto the drop cloth and spun around belting out "It's a do-or-die situation! We will be invincible!" She grabbed Chances paws and shouted "Come-on dance with me!" with a big grin spread across her face.
She drug him around the room, not so much dancing as spinning around in circle trying not to run into things. She jumped up onto the couch, then back down. "Switch!" she yelled and dropped Chances paws and grabbed Jakes, "No, no that's ok! I don't know how to dance!" he pleaded.
"That's ok!" she laughed, "neither do I!"
She started spinning and jumping madly about with him and he followed stiffly behind.
"Look! Do this!" she shouted at him and started throwing her head from side to side so that her long hair flew madly about.
Jake copied her but the effect was less dramatic. Chance started laughing.
"Good!" she shouted, "now this!" She swayed her hips and snapped her fingers to the beat.
Jake tried to copy but the beat was off and the hip swaying was just kind of creepy. Chance had tears running down his face he was laughing so hard.
Chris laughed a little too, "Now this!" she reached her hands over her head had started clapping and moving her feet around.
Jake tried to copy her feet but ended up falling down. Chris fell next to him and shouted, "are you ok?" through fit's of laughter. Chance was in hysterics. Jake was even laughing. The music faded out and the three of them fell silent except for the occasional snigger.
Chance took a deep breath, "wow, it smells good in here," he managed before breaking down in laughter again.
Jake sniffed the air, "what were you doing with the paint brush?"
"Painting, genius," Chirs managed to pant out, "see?" she pointed to where the crack used to be.
Jake sat up, "Wow this place is clean."
Chance whipped tears from his eyes, "yeah," he touched the coffee table, "wow, it's not sticky. Why'd you clean everything up?"
Chris shrugged, "I can only watch bad TV for so long. I like having something to do. I was going to start on my truck next. But I'm not going to do that anymore. I think I've killed enough brain cells inhaling cleaning products for one day."
Chance stood up and stretched, "Boy am I hungry. I think there's some left- over pizza from last night."
Chris scratched her head, "I might've eaten that, I was cleaning out the fridge and realized I was really hungry. Sorry."
"You cleaned out the fridge? Wow!" Chance trotted into the kitchen, "Wow!" they heard him yell, "It doesn't smell like dead fish anymore!"
Jake raised an eyebrow, "Wow that's quite the accomplishment."
Chris stood up and shrugged, "I guess I'm just talented. Come on," she offered a hand to Jake and pulled him off the ground, "I'll buy you guys pizza. What do you want, the same as last night?" she asked, picking up the phone.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A few hours later they found themselves on the couch watching Litterbin on late night TV. Jake was sitting at one end of the couch laughing his head off, Chris was lying with her head on his lap and her feet across Chance's lap and was also in hysterics. Chance was sitting at the opposite end of the small couch with his head resting his hand. He sighed, "Can't we change the channel? This is boring."
Jake shook his head, "No way buddy, we had to watch Fraidy Kat last night."
Chance sighed again, "Borrrrrriiiiinnnnngggg!" he grumbled.
"Well," Litterbin said, tapping his note card on the desk, "It's Friday and we all know what that means."
"Idiot of the week!" the audience shouted.
"That's right ladies and gentlekats, this weeks honor goes to," the band played a drum roll, "the Enforcers Commander Ulysses Feral!"
The three of them on the couch started screaming with laughter, even Chance.
"Chance, you cannot tell me that you don't find this hilarious!" Chris said, gesturing at the screen.
"It only just now got interesting," Chance retorted.
"Yes that's right Ladies and Gentlekats, only our beloved Commander Feral could let this she-kat get away." The image on the screen cut to picture of Chris with a sweet smile on her face. The photo had obviously been edited.
Jake and Chance abruptly stopped laughing. Chris laughed harder, "Oh, come on you guys, I don't smile like that! And Feral is an idiot. Even I'm still trying to figure out how I got away from him."
Litterbin continued, "Only I could get this rare footage captured by a kat with a home video at the sceen of the inident.
A cartoon drawing of Chris and Feral appeared on the screen.
Chris sat up, "uh-oh. I have a bad feeling about this."
On the TV the cartoon Feral shouted "Stand down villain!"
The cartoon Chris replied in a high pitched voice, obviously done by a he- kat, "Who? Little 'ol me?"
Chance sniggered.
The real Chris rolled her eyes, "That is not funny."
Cartoon Feral shouted, "You can't escape! Enforcers! Get her!"
Suddenly the screen went black and the lights went out.
"Hey! What happened?" Chance exclaimed.
Jake looked around, "Power outage."
Outside they could hear the wind screaming and there was the sound of rain pounding on the roof.
The three of them got up and found they're way to a window. Rain pattered against the glass. Lightning flashed across the sky.
"Stupid weather channel," Chance grumbled, "They said slightly cloudy with a chance of showers. They didn't tell us we were going to need to build a boat."
"Is Horse going to be ok?" Jake asked.
Chris nodded, "Yeah, probably. I'm just going to put him in the trailer. I'll put the SWAT Kat's motorcycle," she thought a moment, "somewhere else. Mind if I stash it behind some junk?"
"Yeah go for it," Chance said, "Want some help?"
"No I'll be fine. But a jacket might be nice."
~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~
Chris came back into the house about ten minutes later whistling "Invincible." She shook the water of the jacket Jake had lent her and hung it by the door. She kicked off her shoes and skipped into the kitchen. She slid across the floor in her socks and sang out, "And with the power of conviction," Chance joined her in singing, "we will be invincible!"
Jake shook his head, "You two are nuts."
"Hey shut up, I love that song," Chris said sitting next to him at the table. She shook some water out of her hair, "It's raining dogs out there!" (a/n sorry, I couldn't resist)
It didn't take much for Chance to convince Chris to sleep on the couch again.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
1) Spackle is this putty stuff that you use to fill in small cracks
2) This is an actual song called "Invincible" sung by Pat Benatar, I
didn't write it, I have no idea who wrote it. And please don't sue me
for ripping it off. This song is kind of an important part of the story
line and it's a really cool song to boot. To listen to this song go to
(copy and paste it into the place where you write these things):
www.benatar.com
Click on listen (or a button that says something similar to that, ff.net
is being annoying and not letting me put in the hyperlink, even thought
I'm not making it a hyper link!) Scroll almost down to the bottom of the
page. Just bellow a big logo of the Mark & Brian Christmas show (Mark
and Brian kick ass by the way), and a smaller logo of the Arrow 93 FM
button there is a logo for Off the Record with Joe Benson, followed by a
whole bunch of links. Click on the one that says, "Part 1, July 14,
2001" about a minute into this sound clip the song "Invincible" is
played.
She sighed and reached for the remote resting on the coffee table. She had to tug on it slightly to free it from the sticky reside left by a hundred spilled soda's from ages past. She wrinkled her nose and whipped the remote off on her jeans, it was also a sticky gross mess.
She tossed it back onto the table and went into the kitchen where she found a washrag. She dampened it in the sink then returned to the living room. She pushed the various TV guides and magazines off the table and scrubbed the table as best she could. She did the same to the remote then stacked the magazines neatly on the table.
Returning to the kitchen she noticed that the table was also a sticky mess. She shoved the scattered objects on the table off the table onto a chair then scrubbed the table clean. Sorting through the objects on the chair she found newspapers going a month back, two forks, a steak knife, a greasy rag, and a wrench. She threw the newspapers and the rag away, washed the knife and the forks, and put the wrench back on the table. She sarcastically thought it made a nice center piece.
An hour and a half later she had vacuumed the entire bottom story of the house, and the upstairs hallway. The upstairs and downstairs bathrooms were spotless, three sticky drawers in the kitchen were fixed, the squeaky closet door was oiled, and the kitchen was swept. In the closet she found a basket of dusty cleaning supplies with a small handwritten card saying "Dear Chance, hope this helps to keep the new house clean, Love Mom." Nothing in the basket had ever been opened.
Armed with these supplies she spent another hour and a half cleaning the oven and microwave, mopping the kitchen floor, spraying Pledge on every piece of wood furniture in the house and scrubbing until she could see her reflection, and spraying Febreze everywhere in hopes to get the stale smell out.
The house was cleaner then it had ever been (with the exception of Chances room, she didn't feel comfortable clean out his personal space and figured it might bother him too. Jakes room was already fairly clean). It wasn't that she was a clean freak by any means, she just needed something to do and felt that it would be nice to fix up the house for the two kat's who were putting they're tails on the line for a she-kat they barley know. To her, they were modern knights. So the house was clean and Chris was bored again.
She wandered outside and found an old storage shed. She let herself in and started pawing through the various items enclosed within. She found a small tub of spackle(1) that wasn't quite dried out yet and used it to fill in a large crack in the wall above the couch. Stepping back to survey her handiwork she noted that the crack was gone, but the bright white of the spackle didn't match the off-white color of the wall.
Back in the storage shed she found a half-gallon of paint that she hoped would match the wall color. She found a drop cloth and a paint brush and carried the bundle back into the house. She spread the cloth over the couch (she didn't feel like moving it and was a little afraid of what she might find underneath), then realized she didn't have screw driver to open the paint with. She went to her rig and returned with a screwdriver as well as her Pat Benatar CD. She shoved the CD in the mechanics CD player and hit play.
As she stood on the couch and started to paint her favorite song, "Invincible" came on. (2)
"We cant a afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It's a do-or-die situation
We will be invincible!
And with the power of conviction
There is no sacrifice!
It's a do-or-die situation!
We will be invincible!"
She turned up the volume and started bouncing around on the couch swiping madly about with the paint brush to the rhythm of the music. When she had finished covering the spackle she jumped off the couch over the coffee table and started touching up marks and scratches in the wall, dancing and singing all the while.
Just then the door opened and in walked Chance immediately followed by Jake. Chris threw the paintbrush onto the drop cloth and spun around belting out "It's a do-or-die situation! We will be invincible!" She grabbed Chances paws and shouted "Come-on dance with me!" with a big grin spread across her face.
She drug him around the room, not so much dancing as spinning around in circle trying not to run into things. She jumped up onto the couch, then back down. "Switch!" she yelled and dropped Chances paws and grabbed Jakes, "No, no that's ok! I don't know how to dance!" he pleaded.
"That's ok!" she laughed, "neither do I!"
She started spinning and jumping madly about with him and he followed stiffly behind.
"Look! Do this!" she shouted at him and started throwing her head from side to side so that her long hair flew madly about.
Jake copied her but the effect was less dramatic. Chance started laughing.
"Good!" she shouted, "now this!" She swayed her hips and snapped her fingers to the beat.
Jake tried to copy but the beat was off and the hip swaying was just kind of creepy. Chance had tears running down his face he was laughing so hard.
Chris laughed a little too, "Now this!" she reached her hands over her head had started clapping and moving her feet around.
Jake tried to copy her feet but ended up falling down. Chris fell next to him and shouted, "are you ok?" through fit's of laughter. Chance was in hysterics. Jake was even laughing. The music faded out and the three of them fell silent except for the occasional snigger.
Chance took a deep breath, "wow, it smells good in here," he managed before breaking down in laughter again.
Jake sniffed the air, "what were you doing with the paint brush?"
"Painting, genius," Chirs managed to pant out, "see?" she pointed to where the crack used to be.
Jake sat up, "Wow this place is clean."
Chance whipped tears from his eyes, "yeah," he touched the coffee table, "wow, it's not sticky. Why'd you clean everything up?"
Chris shrugged, "I can only watch bad TV for so long. I like having something to do. I was going to start on my truck next. But I'm not going to do that anymore. I think I've killed enough brain cells inhaling cleaning products for one day."
Chance stood up and stretched, "Boy am I hungry. I think there's some left- over pizza from last night."
Chris scratched her head, "I might've eaten that, I was cleaning out the fridge and realized I was really hungry. Sorry."
"You cleaned out the fridge? Wow!" Chance trotted into the kitchen, "Wow!" they heard him yell, "It doesn't smell like dead fish anymore!"
Jake raised an eyebrow, "Wow that's quite the accomplishment."
Chris stood up and shrugged, "I guess I'm just talented. Come on," she offered a hand to Jake and pulled him off the ground, "I'll buy you guys pizza. What do you want, the same as last night?" she asked, picking up the phone.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A few hours later they found themselves on the couch watching Litterbin on late night TV. Jake was sitting at one end of the couch laughing his head off, Chris was lying with her head on his lap and her feet across Chance's lap and was also in hysterics. Chance was sitting at the opposite end of the small couch with his head resting his hand. He sighed, "Can't we change the channel? This is boring."
Jake shook his head, "No way buddy, we had to watch Fraidy Kat last night."
Chance sighed again, "Borrrrrriiiiinnnnngggg!" he grumbled.
"Well," Litterbin said, tapping his note card on the desk, "It's Friday and we all know what that means."
"Idiot of the week!" the audience shouted.
"That's right ladies and gentlekats, this weeks honor goes to," the band played a drum roll, "the Enforcers Commander Ulysses Feral!"
The three of them on the couch started screaming with laughter, even Chance.
"Chance, you cannot tell me that you don't find this hilarious!" Chris said, gesturing at the screen.
"It only just now got interesting," Chance retorted.
"Yes that's right Ladies and Gentlekats, only our beloved Commander Feral could let this she-kat get away." The image on the screen cut to picture of Chris with a sweet smile on her face. The photo had obviously been edited.
Jake and Chance abruptly stopped laughing. Chris laughed harder, "Oh, come on you guys, I don't smile like that! And Feral is an idiot. Even I'm still trying to figure out how I got away from him."
Litterbin continued, "Only I could get this rare footage captured by a kat with a home video at the sceen of the inident.
A cartoon drawing of Chris and Feral appeared on the screen.
Chris sat up, "uh-oh. I have a bad feeling about this."
On the TV the cartoon Feral shouted "Stand down villain!"
The cartoon Chris replied in a high pitched voice, obviously done by a he- kat, "Who? Little 'ol me?"
Chance sniggered.
The real Chris rolled her eyes, "That is not funny."
Cartoon Feral shouted, "You can't escape! Enforcers! Get her!"
Suddenly the screen went black and the lights went out.
"Hey! What happened?" Chance exclaimed.
Jake looked around, "Power outage."
Outside they could hear the wind screaming and there was the sound of rain pounding on the roof.
The three of them got up and found they're way to a window. Rain pattered against the glass. Lightning flashed across the sky.
"Stupid weather channel," Chance grumbled, "They said slightly cloudy with a chance of showers. They didn't tell us we were going to need to build a boat."
"Is Horse going to be ok?" Jake asked.
Chris nodded, "Yeah, probably. I'm just going to put him in the trailer. I'll put the SWAT Kat's motorcycle," she thought a moment, "somewhere else. Mind if I stash it behind some junk?"
"Yeah go for it," Chance said, "Want some help?"
"No I'll be fine. But a jacket might be nice."
~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~
Chris came back into the house about ten minutes later whistling "Invincible." She shook the water of the jacket Jake had lent her and hung it by the door. She kicked off her shoes and skipped into the kitchen. She slid across the floor in her socks and sang out, "And with the power of conviction," Chance joined her in singing, "we will be invincible!"
Jake shook his head, "You two are nuts."
"Hey shut up, I love that song," Chris said sitting next to him at the table. She shook some water out of her hair, "It's raining dogs out there!" (a/n sorry, I couldn't resist)
It didn't take much for Chance to convince Chris to sleep on the couch again.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
1) Spackle is this putty stuff that you use to fill in small cracks
2) This is an actual song called "Invincible" sung by Pat Benatar, I
didn't write it, I have no idea who wrote it. And please don't sue me
for ripping it off. This song is kind of an important part of the story
line and it's a really cool song to boot. To listen to this song go to
(copy and paste it into the place where you write these things):
www.benatar.com
Click on listen (or a button that says something similar to that, ff.net
is being annoying and not letting me put in the hyperlink, even thought
I'm not making it a hyper link!) Scroll almost down to the bottom of the
page. Just bellow a big logo of the Mark & Brian Christmas show (Mark
and Brian kick ass by the way), and a smaller logo of the Arrow 93 FM
button there is a logo for Off the Record with Joe Benson, followed by a
whole bunch of links. Click on the one that says, "Part 1, July 14,
2001" about a minute into this sound clip the song "Invincible" is
played.