Chance was one kat who rarely had any trouble focusing on his work. Until tonight, that is. It took him seven tries to balance one tire. He tried to keep his mind on the task at hand, but he kept looking out of the corner of his eye at Jake's door. He wanted to talk this situation over with him, but having grown up with Jake, he could tell that Jake wasn't in any mood to talk just yet.

Finally, he heard Jake exit the workshop, presumably headed towards his room. Chance washed his hands and then followed. When he got there, he expected to see Jake pacing back and forth, ready to hash this out. To Chance's surprise, though, Jake had flopped on his stomach in his hammock, one leg hanging out, head on his arms, staring at nothing in particular. Chance looked at him for a few seconds, then jumped up and sat on his dresser - his usual spot when hanging out in this room. For a bit, neither one spoke, but Chance finally felt like he'd better say something.

"That don't look all that comfortable," he said.

"It's not." Jake continued staring into space, swinging idly. Chance waited for him to say something more, but after about a minute passed, it seemed clear he wasn't going to. Chance decided to try again.

"So?" he ventured.

"So?" Jake echoed.

Chance, sick of fishing for conversation, shot back, "Yeah, so? So what the heck we gonna do here, Jake!" His heels pounded the side of the dresser. "Buy this loser off?"

Jake slowly turned his eyes towards Chance. "With what?"

"Heck, I dunno." Chance furrowed his brow. "We'll raise the money somehow. We can sell some stuff."

"Like the TurboKat?"

Chance jumped off the dresser and stood next to Jake's hammock, which put them pretty much eye to eye. He had tried to be nice here - after all, Jake had been having a really bad week. But now he'd gotten just a few too many smart-aleck comments from Jake. He took a deep breath, trying not to lose his temper. He peered into Jake's eyes and said, in a low voice, "It's nice to see you're taking this so well."

Jake sighed again, pulled his leg back into the hammock, and tried to bring himself back to the here and now. "Chance, I'm sorry. It's just...well, to be honest, I've sort of been expecting something like this for a while."

"Say what?"

"Well, we're out there fighting the bad guys a couple times a week. How long before Kat's Eye News decides they're gonna track us down?" Jake smirked. "I just thought it'd be Ann Gora at our door, not some dweeb."

Chance crossed his arms. "Fine. If you've been expecting this to happen, you musta spent more time than me figurin' out what the heck we're s'posed to do."

"Well, kinda sorta."

"Good. Now tell me - what the heck are we s'posed to do?"

Jake rolled over onto his side. "Well, I can tell you this much - I don't think we'll be paying him off."

Chance jumped back onto the dresser. "Oh?"

"For starters, as I said, we don't have anything to pay him off with. Also, my guess is he doesn't want to be paid off." Jake made a vague gesture with his finger. "If he did, why'd he bother applying for the job?"

Scratching the back of his neck, Chance muttered, "You lost me."

Jake sat up in the hammock, slowly, so as not to spill out onto the ground. He started ticking points off onto his fingers. "OK, let's

assume he's after money. If he is, he sure seems to be going about it the wrong way."

"Really? How should he go about it?"

"Well, why didn't he...why didn't he cut words out of newspapers, glue them to a note, and send it to us? Or give us an anonymous

phone call?"

"Oh, come on, Jake!"

"No, I'm serious, buddy. I admit, I don't know nothin' about blackmail, except what I've learned from late-night TV shows. But still, why show up at our front door? Why introduce himself to us, tell us his name and everything? He certainly didn't have to."

"Why shouldn't he? It's not like we'd waste him right there in the lobby."

"Sure, we know we wouldn't do that, but how would he know that? We've heard plenty of talk show hosts say the Swat Kats are a couple of vigilantes who shoot things just for kicks. If you believe them, we'd have no problem wasting someone who tried to crash our little party." Jake inclined his head towards the office. "And it's not just that. Why give us a resume, with his address and phone number, and a list of references?"

Chance hesitated before saying, "All that info could be fake."

Jake nodded, "Yeah, it could be...except it isn't." Jake jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "That may not have been Marcus Greene we saw this afternoon, but there is a Marcus Greene who held those jobs, who knows those people, and who went to those schools."

"You know that for sure." Chance sounded skeptical.

"I made a couple phone calls. Everything seems to pan out."

Chance thought for a minute. "OK, then. Where does that leave us?"

"Well, it sort of leaves out the blackmail theory. No matter how I look at it, I just can't make it stick."

"Well, what's this guy after, then?"

With a shrug, Jake said, "As far as I can tell, we'll have to take it at face value. He came in because he wants a job."

"A job! That's it!"

"Sure, why not?"

"Heck, Jake, don't take this wrong, but you don't go up to the SwatKats and ask them for a job!"

"Marcus did. And why not?" Jake repeated, smirking. "We advertised, didn't we?"

"Well, if a job is all he's after, what's with all the hints and sly looks?"

Jake scratched his head. "I'm not sure, but I've got a few guesses."

Chance folded his arms. "All right, let's hear 'em."

"Well, first off, let's pretend he's being nice." Jake held up his hand to Chance. "I know, I know - you don't think he was all that nice, and, frankly, neither do I. But still - look at it this way. Marcus apparently knows we're the SwatKats, and from the want ad, he also knows that we need a clerk in our garage here. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that whoever we hire has got to be someone we can trust."

"I know. We've been over this."

"Yeah, from our point of view. But look at it from Marcus' for a second. Should he just say to me during our interview - 'Hey, by the way, I know you guys are the SwatKats, but don't sweat it, I won't tell anyone'? Maybe this was just his way of letting us know that he knows."

Chance thought for a minute, then shifted position on the dresser. "I'm not sure I'm buying it."

"I'm not sure I am, either. But it's the best theory I've got right now."

"Well, it's possible, I guess." Chance banged his heels against the dresser a couple more times, head hung down, lost in

thought.

Jake smiled wickedly. "OK, then, try this one on for size. He's trying to make sure we hire him."

Chance looked up. "How? By ticking us both off?"

"No, by hinting that he'll tell the world about us if we don't hire him."

Chance tilted his head a bit. "Oh, so now you think he is blackmailin' us?"

Jake shrugged. "I don't know, buddy. I'm just tossing ideas out. What's your theory?"

"Me?" Chance thought for a second, then tossed up his hands. "Heck, I dunno what to think."

"Well, whatever Marc's reasons were, he did what he did, and now we've got to figure out what to do."

Sighing, Chance said, "Well, what do you think we should do?"

Jake paused for a few seconds before saying, "I say we hire him."

"Jake, you're not serious."

"Why not? He's the only qualified kat we had come through our door the last three days."

As Jake expected, Chance looked very doubtful. "Well, maybe so, but do we actually want him working here? And how do we know we can trust him?"

Jake said, "I think he showed us we could." Seeing Chance's blank look, Jake went on, "You know, by giving us all this information on himself."

"Perhaps, but it hardly means we should put our lives in his hands, Jake."

Jake shrugged. "Well, if you want to get right down to it, our so-called lives are in his hands right now, aren't they? Besides, we said that when we hired someone, we were gonna have to take them into our confidence, right? It looks like we can just skip over that part."

"Hm." Chance thought about that for a minute. "So...now what? Call him up and tell him he's hired?"

Jake said, "Well, sure." He lay back down and swung for a minute in deep thought. "You know, this might not prove to be so bad - sort of admitting someone into our circle here."

Chance rolled his eyes. "Whatever, Jake. If you want to make some new friends, fine. But let's lay off on giving him a key to the TurboKat until we know him a bit better, all right?"

The phone rang. Jake leaned down and grabbed it off the wall.

"H'lo? Hey, Kate...Nah, just got off, really - what's up?...Lunch tomorrow?" Jake glanced at Chance, who half-shook his head. "Ummm...no, doesn't look good. We have, oh, five hundred cars or so to get done by last week, if y'know what I mean. Sorry 'bout that...Yeah, maybe by next month, we'll be caught up enough...OK...yeah, say hi to Mom..." Jake, out of the corner of his eye, caught Chance waving franticly. "Oh, and Chance says hi...uh-huh. See ya."

Jake hung the phone up and shook his head. "Can't even squeeze in lunch with my sister. Some life." He jumped out of the hammock and stretched a bit. "Ah, well. Tomorrow morning, I'll give Marcus a call. But you're right - we'll probably have to feel him out a bit. Gotta crawl before you can walk."

Chance smiled a bit. "Deep. Who said that?"

Jake shrugged. "Some dead kat, I think." He looked at his watch. "You know what? I think I'll take another crack at the Mazda."

"Buddy, it's after nine o'clock!"

Jake turned around at his door. "Yeah, I know...but with the state I've been in, I'd better take advantage of any burst of energy I get. You go on to bed."

Chance thought for a second, then rolled his eyes again. "Who are we kidding? Neither of us is getting any sleep tonight. Come on, I'll keep you company."