Like Kats and Dogs
Chapter Three: A Call To Arms
The Second Meeting
AN: This chapter is less dark than the last two, just because I can only write so much angst before I am forced to revert to my natural fluffy state and write something happier. Thanks for all the reviews, you guys, keep it up! I'm glad I'm appealing to such a broad range of people, from total non-shippers to rampant Sky/Syd fans... hehe. Oh, and I was listening to Tori Amos's 'Ribons Undone' when i wrote this, just to set the mood (if you know the song). Anyway, have fun!
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masterranger3: Thank you! I hope you do continue to enjoy this fic... I looked up your fics but haven't gotten round to reading them yet (school, and our first exams are in about two months so they're piling on the work-load... -moan-) Anyway, I will read them at some point, 'cause they sound good. Though I'm generally not much into Kat/Doggie stuff, I do have a seriouse 'shipper's instinct so there's a danger that any two characters I write I start to 'ship subconsciously. If you feel it going that way, or the characters going OOC, seriously, alert me pronto, and I'll whack myself over the head with SPD episodes until I have a firm grasp on the characters again. ;) That said, bare in mind that I'm taking certainly libertees simply because these guys don't get that much development on the show anyway, as I attempt to add plausabe depths to their characters. Anyway, glad you took the time to leave me such a detailed review and hope you like this chapter as much!
BrandonB: Thanks! Glad you found the interaction so believable (I was worried I was over-doing the angst, which I've read in other PR fandom and find really unbelievable because it's badly written on a show that generally doesn't do 'dark'.) Still, if you think it works, I've done a good job! Did I thank you for adding me to your favourites? Well, anyway, I am now. I read your profile (I like to know who I'm appealing to) and wasglad to see you 'ship Trent/Kira (there aren't enough of us!) Not to mention Tommy/Kat (not enough of us there, either...) Anyway, you're definitey the kind of PR fan I'm trying to write for, so I'm really glad you like this fic. I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as you did the last (I turned down the angst for this one, 'cause I can only write so much at a time, but still) enoy!
GargoyleSama: Yay! I really like Boom and Kat's relationship too! Boom so clearly worships the ground Kat walks on, it's just so damn cute! Rest assured, I'll be dealing with Boom's entrance into Kat's life later, and I'm already planning on setting up a few forshadowing-type scenarios before then. Again, I'm wary of 'shipping them because I want to stay as true to the characters as possible, but I definitely want to introduce the uh... 'Boom Factor' into Doggie and Kat's already complicated relationship at some point. In the mean time, enjoy!
StarTraveler: Great! You're not a militant 'shipper! It's so difficult to deal with those people who can't accept that other people might not share their oppinions on which characters should end up with who in fandom. Hehe, but I'm glad that I'm appealing to a broad range of people, reguardless of their 'shipper tendancies (I've got all sorts, Doggie/Kat Kat/Boom Boom/Cruger... ah, well, okay, not so much the last one, but you get the idea... ;D ) Means I'm doing good! And it's so cool to be on someone's 'alert' list! Thanks for your review and I hope you keep enjoying this fic.
Shifter: I'm saving your sanity? What do you need sanity for? Come, descend into madness with me! MWAHAHAHA! -achem- yes. Anyway. Glad to offer you a little relief (I know how you feel). Stay sane, my friend, (how can you leave me reviews if you go nuts? ;p) And enjoy!
Jill: Thank you! I hope you think this chapter is as good.
Silver-Time-Ranger: Thanks! Am I keeping up the good work? Can you tell me after you read this chapter? -hint hint- hehe! Enjoy!
Funky In Fishnet: More warm fuzzies! SQUEEEEEEEEEEE! Yay! This chapter is on the fuzzier side anyway, so I think I'll stand at the door of this fic and hand out the warm fuzzies in handfulls so everyone is happy... -starts singing 'feed the world' and sways back and forth contentedly- um, anyway... glad this is believable to you! It's challenging trying to write Kat, who was already over a century old by this point, but is still probably much younger mentally than she is on the show at the moment. Doggie's a little easier simply because I didn't even bother trying to write him before his wife (supposedly) died, and it's clear that his mentality hasn't changed much since he lost her. So anyway, read on and enjoy!
the real vampire: Thanks! Here's more for you!
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"Watch her run,
With ribbons undone,
She's a rose in a lily's cloak,
She can hide her charms,
It is her right,
There will be time,
To chase the sun,
With ribbons undone,
She runs like a fire does,
Just picking up daises,
Comes in for a landing,
A pure flash of lightening,
Past alice blue blossoms,
You follow her laughter,
And then she'll surprise you,
Arms filled with lavender."
-Tori Amos 'Ribbons Undone'
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He spotted her once, in a student café on KO-35 while he was over there on a mission for SPD. Not much more than a glorified paper-chase, but still, got him back out in the field. She was wearing a wide brimmed hat to cover her ears, but hadn't bothered with contacts on the eyes. KO-35's population were already getting used to having aliens among them. He'd heard she was working on the Terra Venture project, engineering the light-speed engines. But she was still technically at school, and apparently enjoying herself, looking almost like any other student, dancing and laughing and plucking with surprising skill at the strings of a guitar with the informal little band that had gathered there.
She didn't see him, and he let her be.
In the three year gap between her leaving for the academy and Doggie finding himself with the unpleasant duty of drafting her back into the SPD, she left him four messages. The first, a month after she left, was an awkward 'hello, hope you're okay.' The second, six months later, a more detailed breakdown of what she was doing, providing him with the means of keeping an eye on her progress (which he had already been doing). The third came over a year and a half later, a second rather awkward 'hello, hope you're okay.' Except that this time he was fairly sure she'd been attempting to tell him something. The forth came barely a week before he was sent out to recruit her. She'd graduated from the academy, top of her class, of course, with full honours (it was the forth time. She'd now done eight degrees, and her professors were categorically banning her from coming back, insisting that she go out and actually do something with her skills).
The street wasn't so much a street as it was a large garden with houses placed at random intervals along it's length. It wasn't difficult to spot the house that must be hers. It had been modelled on the traditional style of accommodation for Felinas, with a door halfway up it's front wall, a set of steps leading down for those of a less feline nature to get to it. The front was rough, covered in footholds and handholds for the occupants to scale it's length. Windows were dotted at seemingly random intervals. The roof was rounded, and growing grass. Ropes, ladders and swings hung off the wings. Such an elaborate set up suggested that she was not the only Felina living within.
He climbed up to the front door, and lingered outside it, wondering what right he had to come here. It had been he who brought her up when the need to develop new morphers was again being debated at SPD headquarters. She alone had the kind of IQ and expertise in genetic physics that was going to be needed in the development of the sort of morphers future SPD rangers would need. It made sense. But it didn't stop him feeling horribly awkward about asking for her help.
"Are you going to stand there all day looking confused, or are you coming in?" The voice was lighter toned than he remembered it, but unmistakably that of his one time room mate.
She was leaning out of a window over his head, chin propped on her hands, elbows resting on the sill. "Heard you coming a mile away," she told him, a smile gracing her lips.
She looked amazingly healthy. More so than he'd ever encountered her before. Her eyes were clear and wide, her skin a gentle off-white, her ears upright and pricked, her liver spots in full colour. Even the scars had faded almost to invisibility. Felinas healed very well, he knew, but somehow he'd expected her to be more like he remembered; riddled with scars, of both the physical and the emotional kind.
"Hello, Kit," he looked up at her.
"Kat," she corrected, blithely. "Call me Kat. Katherine. Katherine Manx. That's what they've christened me here, anyway."
"I see," Cruger watched her twirl a tendril of wild dark hair around one finger. He couldn't remember if it was just her being coy, or if that was what she did when she was distracted. "It's… SPD business. They sent me to talk to you."
She put her head on one side, "SPD? Interesting. I suppose that means you have to come in, then."
"It would be… ill advised to have such a conversation on your doorstep," Cruger agreed.
She smiled slightly, "the door's unlocked," and disappeared inside.
There was definitely more than one Felina living here, though Kat seemed to be the only one around at the time. He'd only been inside a Felina household once before, when he was little more than a child. His brother had made friends with a young sibling group of them (they were born in litters of around five, and always stayed close to their brothers and sisters) and once Cruger had accompanied his brother when he went to play. What little he knew of their dwellings told him that, usually, whole grown up sibling groups lived together, and any children the women in that sibling group had were raised collectively. They didn't take life partners the way that many other cultures did. Men experienced fatherhood through raising the offspring of their sisters. Their houses were often like rabbit warrens in size and structure, usually with all the residents sleeping in one nest-like room and then having their own quarters elsewhere, with one large communal living and eating room in the middle.
The kitchen, which the door opened into, was actually fairly human looking, probably because this house had been built by Kerovians, who were essentially humans born on another planet. But there were the usual array of hand and footholds to allow anyone who chose to navigate the walls instead of the floor.
Kat dropped out of a hatch in the ceiling, grinning when it became apparent that she'd made him jump.
"Hello, Cruger," she put her head on one side and smiled at him, "take a seat."
He obliged, feeling a little awkward in the neat little space. She went to the sink, occupying herself with putting cutlery away, "you want something to drink?"
"No thank you," he replied.
"Sure?" She ran herself a glass of water and watched him inquisitively over it.
"I'm fine," he assured her, firmly. "I… how have you been, Kat?"
Kat slid into a seat opposite him at the table, setting down her glass to run a finger around it's rim, "well enough. You know I graduated from the academy. Again."
"Yes," Doggie felt himself smile slightly, "I heard."
There was long, awkward pause.
"So," Kat continued to run her finger round the rim of the glass, producing a very quiet, very high-pitched whining sound Doggie was fairly sure only he could hear, "what do the SPD want?"
"New morphers," he replied, bluntly. "Our rangers are being kicked all over the galaxy by Grumm and his armies. We need new suits, new weapons… anything to give us an edge."
"And you think I can give you an edge?" Kat looked distinctly doubtful.
"We have all of our best and brightest working on the problem already," Doggie told her, "Angela Fairweather, Kendrix Morgan, Billy Cranston… they're all drawing blanks. We wont make you if you really don't want to but…"
"But if I don't I'm condemning the galaxy to domination by Grumm," Kat folded her arms.
Cruger rubbed his eyes, feeling a tired. That was a slight over-simplification, but in purely black and white terms,it was looking to be the case. "You are the only person left to us with the kind of expertise needed to create something effective enough to keep Grumm at bay. Everyone else is either dead or on his pay roll."
Kat bit her lip, "I swore I'd stay out of this war, Doggie. You know that."
"I know," he sighed, heavily. Did she have to look quite so betrayed?
"Now what?" Kat seemed almost to be talking to herself, "weapons creator? Wonderful career choice. I want to help people, not kill the ones who happened to be on the wrong side… I knew I should have gone into medicine… I could always take another degrees, I suppose."
"Kat," Doggie interrupted her monologue, trying very hard not to be amused. She really hadn't changed as drastically as her appearance suggested.
"Do I have to give you an answer now?" She asked, looking vaguely irritated.
"No," Cruger shook his head, "but within the week, we will need one."
"Fine," Kat ran a hand through her hair, "there are a few people I have to talk to first."
"I see."
It was an unspoken question. Who, exactly, was she living with?
She looked up at him, "I found my brother."
"Really?" The surprise tasted odd. Kat's family group had been scattered across her planet at the time Grumm had attacked; it seemed they were all working on the same project, with the same boss, and had all been sent on last ditch missions to distribute the finished Menthes serum to various other researchers that day. Kat wasn't even from the particular continent Doggie had found her on. As it was, there had always been the slight possibility that some of her siblings were still live. She was by no means the only survivor to dragged out of the wreckage, and some continents had been slightly less decimated than others… (though the one on which Kat had been found was one of the better off. Some simply hadn't existed anymore). Thankfully, Grumm hadn't, at that point, anyway, managed to create weapons destructive enough to wipe an entire planet out of existence in one go.
Kat herself had consciously given up hope that any of her siblings were still alive while she was recovering, simply because she had neither the emotional nor the physical strength to cope with what would be an extremely harrowing journey, even if one or two of her blood relatives were still alive at the end of it.
"Miguel, he's calling himself," Kat let a smirk touch her lips, "he was always the pretentious one. And my sister; they've been calling her Mossy. Don't ask me why."
"Two," Doggie remarked, unnecessarily.
"Out of seven," Kat sighed, "not bad, I suppose," a bitter smile twisted her features and she looked down.
Doggie didn't comment. He knew the feeling well. What was left was so precious, but it sometimes felt like losing everything would have been better. That way, what might have been wouldn't feel so tantalisingly close.
Lords of Sirius, what right did he have to come here and take her away from the steady rebuilding of her shattered life? The fact that he was stuck in the smoking ruins of his home didn't mean that she had to stay in hers.
On the very edge of his aural field, Doggie caught a noise. A snuffling, a muffled sneeze. Kat had caught it too, her ears already pricked in the direction of a crawling tunnel near the middle of the back wall, leading off somewhere through the house.
A small head suddenly appeared out of it, half hidden behind a comfort blanket held up by long, birch-twig fingers. One bright green eye and a thatch of wild dark hair was visible. It let out a feeble, questioning cry. Doggie had learned some of the Felina tongue from Kat when she had been living with him, in the period of time when she had stubbornly refused to speak Common. That was the cry of a disorientated kit calling for it's mother.
Kat stood up, holding out her arms to let the sleepy child tumble into them, out of the tunnel, as he sucked distractedly on the corner of his blanket. The adult looked back at Doggie apologetically, "I wanted to tell you…"
"I know," Doggie sighed, heavily. He'd expected as much. The most common reason in the universe for an adultto be at home on a working day was the care of a sickly child.
"There's a fever going round the nursery," Kat sighed, stroking her son's wild hair (he stared up at her adoringly), "and Little One here is my smallest. He gets everything."
The young Felina seemed to know he was being discussed, and sat up, peering suspiciously at Doggie. He was about the size of a small, malnourished toddler, but all Felina young were tiny to begin with, and you would never mistake him for a human child. Quite apart from the eyes, the fangs and the ears, he was far neater and better proportioned than the average baby of Cruger's own race. It was quite probable that, in full health, this child would be able to out-manoeuvre a professional athlete if it came down to a fight. Felinas had evolved to be as independent as possible as young as possible. The average baby could walk, talk and feed itself at just six months old, though they held a deep psychological attachment to their mother that would last well into adulthood.
"I see," Doggie watched, feeling some kind of fascination. He'd never had children, though he'd wanted to. It was odd, imagining Kat as a mother, though he supposed that she must be more stable these days. She must have found more than her siblings, he supposed, though he knew that the father was unlikely to be around. He'd said it himself, three years ago: Felinas didn't take partners.
Kat was talking to her son in their language, no doubt attempting to explain to the infant what the strange dog-man was doing in their kitchen. "I should take him back to bed," she glanced at Cruger.
Cruger nodded, "do that. I'll see myself out. You know how to contact us, when you decide."
"Yes," she nodded. She had that troubled look in her eyes, when she wanted to express something, but was having trouble digging up the words outside of her own language. Gently, she set her son down in the mouth of the crawl tunnel he'd appeared from, issuing instructions to go ahead, then hesitated, unsure whether to wait for Cruger to move or take the initiative. Then, being the creature she was, she decided she was tired of waiting for Cruger to handle these moments for her.
She took two steps forward, and hugged him, briefly. "It is good to see you, Doggie."
No one had stood that close him since she'd left. "You too, Kat. You too."
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"A look in her eyes,
Says the battle's beginning,
From school she comes home and cries,
'I don't want to grow up,
At last not tonight'."
-Tori Amos 'Ribbons Undone'