Although it wasn't necessary for him to do so, Marc waved the TurboKat to a landing in the middle of the deserted street. Razor jumped out first, followed quickly by T-Bone.

"Still there?" asked Razor.

"You bet," Marc confirmed. He led them through the alley, and once they got to Shingle Street, Marc spread his arms out. "There. Lizards."

"Lizards" might not be a completely accurate description of the creatures, but it was close enough. They were green-grey and scaly, with long bulky bodies ending in short stubby tails. Their legs were rather short, which kept them from moving very quickly. In fact, as Marc had said, three of them weren't moving at all - they were lying on their stomachs in the street, eyes closed. The one that appeared to be awake sort of meandered up and down the street very slowly, carefully inspecting anything it came across - the curb, an empty can, whatever.

T-Bone, Razor and Marc watched without speaking for a minute or so, after which T-Bone said, "Not the most dangerous things we've met."

"Yeah," agreed Razor. "I guess there's no reason to shoot them or anything."

Marc said, "Maybe so, but what the heck are they?"

Razor shook his head. "No idea. But let's see if we can find out." He turned to Marc. "First of all, you'd better head back. We don't want anyone to link you to us."

Marc tried to look pained. "I see. You don't want to be seen with me."

Razor smiled and nodded. "Well, yeah, exactly. We'll catch up with you back at the salvage yard. Oh, and wait." Marc, who had taken one step towards the alley, pulled up short. "Can you meet us for dinner tonight?"

Marc smirked. "Well, it'll mean canceling my dinner date with David Litterbin, but hey, anything for a friend."

"Cool. See ya." Razor watched Marc disappear into the dark of the alley.

"What's up for dinner?" asked T-Bone.

"Just an idea I had. Come on, let's see if we can isolate these..." Razor wiggled his fingers at the creatures. "...things."

T-Bone scanned the street. "Maybe we can run 'em in the alley, then block both sides."

Razor looked around, then nodded. "All right - let's do it. I saw some concrete barricades iown on Pollard. Why don't you go ahead and block that side with them?"

"Roger." T-Bone scrambled back to the TurboKat and took off. He picked up a barricade with the tow rope claw and positioned it next to the alley entrance. Then he radioed down. "Hey, Razor, is one gonna be enough to keep 'em in?"

"Ummm...better put three on. This one doesn't look any worse after head-butting that truck."

"Gotcha." He placed another barricade directly behind the first, then placed a third crosswise on top. "All clear on this side. How're you doing down there?"

"Lousy," responded Razor. "These things aren't budging. I tried shouting, kicking...you don't have any lizard treats on you, do you?"

"Nope."

"Well, looks like I'll have to zap them, then." Razor walked around to the back of one of the sleeping creatures. He pulled on his taser gun and adjusted it so as to send out the minimum voltage possible. "Giddy-up," commanded Razor, sending a jolt into the creature's backside.

"Hrumph," it responded, and slowly waddled forward. After several steps, Razor zapped it on its left side to get it to turn to the right. It was a much slower process than he had hoped, but eventually, with occasional zaps, Razor managed to get it into the alley.

"Now stay," he commanded. "Stay! I'm going after your friends."

A full half-hour after they had arrived, T-Bone and Razor had all four of the creatures sitting in the alley, with barricades on both sides, much to the delight of the small crowd of kits who had discovered the goings-on from the surrounding area. T-Bone approached one of the older ones, a boy about ten years old.

"Hi. What's your name?"

"Chris," said the boy, eyes wide open.

"Hi, Chris. I'm T-Bone. Will you do my partner 'n' me a favor?"

Chris sputtered, "S-sure, Mr T-Bone."

"We're going to go find somewhere to take these things. We need you to sort of stand guard here, and make sure the other kits don't jump into the alley there. We're not sure if these things are dangerous or not. Can you do that for us?" Chris nodded. "Good. Now if these lizards start breakin' out of here, you send all the rest of the kits home, then head home yourself and call the Enforcers, OK?"

"Why can't I call you?" asked Chris.

"We're not in the phone book, Chris," said T-Bone, smiling.

"Oh, OK. I can do that."

"Great. Thanks a lot for helping us out."

"Sure thing," said Chris, smiling back.

T-Bone turned back to Razor. "OK, where to now?"

"Well, we've got to find a place to put these things...and I've got a few ideas about that." They climbed back into the TurboKat and headed back north.

The pizza had been delivered, and the sodas were on the table. Now Jake and Marc were waiting for T-Bone to return.

Marc was sprawled out on the sofa. "Mark this day on your calender, Jake. Chance is late to dinner."

Jake put his feet up on the table. "Hey, it's happened before..." He scratched his head. "...I'm pretty sure." Then he turned around at the sound of the TurboKat coming in. "He's here...cool. We won't have to reheat the pizza."

Momentarily T-Bone came in, pulling off his gloves. "Mission accomplished. That gal actually seemed really happy to get that thing." He went back in to change, and Marc got up to open the pizza boxes.

After a couple slices all around, Marc finally tried to turn the topic. "So what's the deal, Jake? Not that I mind you buying me pizza."

"Well, I've been thinking..."

"It doesn't show."

"Cute. No, really, I want to run some ideas by you guys. Chance, you and me have been running around as the SwatKats for some years now." Chance nodded, his mouth full of pizza. "Let me ask some questions, and see if I've missed anything." Jake took a sip of soda, then leaned forward. "Think back to when we were younger, and we were wanting to be Enforcers." Chance nodded again. "What did the Enforcers do?"

Chance looked confused. "The same stuff they do now."

Jake shook his head. "No, not quite. Yeah, it was close, but think back to ten, fifteen years ago. What was different?"

Chance shrugged, and Marc said, "It was about the same, right? I mean, sure, there weren't all these monsters roaming around the city..."

Jake snapped his fingers and pointed at Marc. "Exactly. You hit it. All these monsters. And Dark Kat. And Dr Viper. And so on."

Grabbing another piece of pizza, Marc asked, "What about them?"

"Where were they ten, fifteen years ago?"

Marc said, "I dunno. Studying how to be evil?"

"No, that's not the point. Ten, fifteen years ago, the Enforcers were preparing for, you know, wars with other countries, policing the streets and so forth. Now they're fighting three-story...whatevers. How come?"

Chance thought while chewing for a second, then hazarded a guess. "Um...they didn't know how to make monsters back then?"

"And now everybody does?" countered Jake. "One kat may have figured out. But now Mega-Kat City is like...like a supervillian outlet store. One after the other."

"And you smell a rat?" asked Marc.

"Yeah, I do. Think of this. Let's divide the players into 'good' and 'evil'. On the good side, we've got us."

"And the Enforcers," threw in Marc.

Jake made a face, then said, "OK, fine. Us and the Enforcers. But take away our planes and our weapons, strip off our uniforms, and what have you got?"

Chance grinned. "A nudist colony."

"Well, yeah. We're just kats, after all. But take away Dark Kat's imps and his weapons, yank of his cloak, and...well, whatever you got there, it ain't just a kat."

"Yeah? So?"

"So, we've got all these...these non-Kats..."

"...and ain't none of them on our side," finished Chance.

"Bingo, and I'm thinking this can't be all coincidence."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Chance. "You can't mean they're all...what? Related? In cahoots with each other?"

Jake shrugged. "They might be. Sure, we haven't seen Dr Viper eating lunch with DarkKat at the deli on the corner, but that doesn't mean there isn't something up." He looked at Chance, then at Marc. "You see a problem with this theory?"

"Besides it being utterly nuts, no," said Chance.

"But then what's going on? There's a run on kats, or whatever, trying to take over MegaKat City. It seems more likely - at least to me - that there's one kat behind it, and the rest are doing it for him. Beside, you ever notice that we've never seen two of the bad guys fighting each other? If they really want to take over the world individually, wouldn't the other bad guys pose a threat to them as well?"

"Question," said Chance. "If they're all in cahoots, why not attack all at once? I mean, if you've got an army in a war, you don't send one soldier out a time to fight the enemy."

Jake thought for a second. "Good point." He furrowed his brow, then reached for his soda. "Maybe they're just not as organized as all that."

Marc shrugged. "Possible, but not very compelling."

"OK, put that aside for a second. Let's talk about those lizards you found, Marc. What do you make out of that?"

Marc waved his pizza crust. "They looked like mutants gone horribly wrong."

"Or mutants not gone wrong enough," added Chance.

Jake nodded. "My thoughts exactly. If this is Dr Viper's work - and it certainly seems like it is - it certainly isn't his best work."

"Maybe it was s'posed to be a diversion," suggested Chance.

Jake shrugged. "It could have been, but it stunk as one. Marc stumbled onto them by accident. If you wanted to create a diversion, I'm sure you'd do better than to put a few slow-moving, harmless lizards in a place where no one lives yet." He reached for another piece of pizza. "Besides, nothing happened the rest of the day...at least, as far as we know." He took a bite, then added, "So...what were they doing out there?"

Chance leaned back and looked thoughtful. "Maybe they escaped from their...pen...or whatever."

"Yeah, that's what I was sort of thinking. And, remember how slow those things move."

Chance got excited. "So if they did escape from somewhere, they sure couldn't have gotten very far."

"...which means that housing project can't be too far from where they escaped from," finished Jake.

Marc stood up to collect the empty pizza boxes. "OK, so what are you proposing?"

Jake leaned back. "Well, I was going to ask you that."

Marc stopped dead in his tracks. "Me? What for? You're not hinting that I'm one of those non-kats, are you?"

Jake shook his head. "Nah. If you were, Chance and I woulda been dead long ago. But you remember how you figured Chance and me out?"

"Y-yeah..."

"What are the chances you can do the same for these other guys?"

"Hmm...I never thought of that." He stood there for a few seconds. "If I can get a bunch of information of them..." He shrugged. "I don't see why not. It's worth a shot, anyhow."

"Cool." Jake got up to clear the drinks as Marc went outside with the boxes.

"Hey, Jake," said Chance as he reluctantly got up as well. "What about those lizards?"

"What? Oh, right. I had you take three to the zoo just to get rid of them. But that woman in Selinda is supposedly the leading biogeneticist in the area. I figured I'd have her take a look at one of them."

Chance didn't look convinced. "What're you thinkin' she'll find?"

"Heck, I dunno. Probably nothing. But I figure it couldn't hurt to get as much info as we can get. I'm thinking every other time we've waited for them to attack first, but it would be great, just once, if we could strike first."