A/N: Thanks to all reviewers! This story is no longer a one-shot, it's a series of mini-stories! For this segment, just pretend it's the Fourth of July. I promise it will be worth teh funniness in ze following story!

Color Coated Kitty

By JadeRabbyt

Vlad woke up with a cat on his face.

Most experienced cat owners are familiar with this comical habit of their feline friends, but Vlad was not an experienced cat owner. Vlad was not even a mildly enthusiastic cat owner. Perhaps it was true that he did like it when Kitty jumped up on his lap while he was reading the paper in the morning, and he couldn't say that there was anything to criticize about the feline's divine purring, but still. Waking up with the thing drowsing on his face, breathing cat hair up his nose, did cross a line somewhere.

Fortunately for Kitty, Vlad woke up gradually that morning. Had it been otherwise, had he woken up to the shuddering slam of a door or the sharp crack of a splintering tree branch, Kitty and Vlad Plasmius might have come to blows. However, as Vlad grumbled mild curses and rolled Kitty onto a side pillow, Kitty seemed barely aware of the danger that she had just narrowly managed to escape. Likewise with her master. Vlad eventually swung his feet out of bed, and after a couple seconds of standard early-morning amnesia, he stood up and stretched with a groan. Kitty ambled over his wrinkled covers and stole the warm spot where he had been sleeping.

Vlad scowled, adjusting his night robe. "Stupid animal." He'd have to remember to make sure his bedroom door was shut in the evenings.

Kitty ignored him entirely and went back to sleep. Vlad quirked a smile and went to get ready for work.

XXX

Getting ready for work always put Vlad in a good mood, but today it put him in an especially good, snide, snickering mood. It was the Fourth of July, which meant the saps who worked for his company got the day off. It also served as a very pleasant reminder to Vlad of his omnipotence over the little people as the majority shareholder of the D.A.L.V. Group. He reasoned it this way: When his worker drones got a day off, it meant they missed an entire eight- or nine-hour day of labor. When Majority Shareholder Vlad Masters got a day off, it meant he didn't even have to bother booting up his computer and checking his email. Vlad did visit his workshops occasionally, but generally the average weekday's business could be wrapped up in ten minutes through the internet.

Being the industrious guy he was, Vlad decided he'd do some voluntary overtime and check his email anyway. Only one message popped up on his laptop, and it wasn't a Nigerian scam. For some reason he'd been seeing a lot of those lately. He suspected that the Fenton brat had put him on some kind of mailing list, and it had really been getting on his nerves lately. Vlad opened the message that was not a Nigerian scam and sat back with his coffee, leaning his elbows on the mahogany table.

"PARTY TONITE!" screamed the email. "TALK SMACK ABOUT BLUE-COLLAR NITWITS WITH HUNDREDS OF OTHER INDUSTRY LEADERS!"

This would be Yeman Harding's Fourth of July party invite.

While Vlad manufactured things that could affect ghosts directly, zappers and stingers and whatnot, Yeman specialized in detection instruments. The small but perceptible difference in gadgets made them associates rather than rivals. Yeman had a lively business and an extraordinarily big mouth, but with some under-the-table government contracts he could afford it easily enough. They all could. Nobody on the guest list made the Fortune 500, but most of them—defense contractors, car manufacturers, a couple airline execs, and other odds and ends of the government moochers—got along fine. Better than fine, even without Vlad's unique powers.

Whether or not they were good party company was another matter altogether. But Vlad had already sent in his RSVP, and he looked forward to seeing Yeman again. Plus, business for him had taken a small but nasty drop, and it couldn't hurt to put in some face time before the quarterly report was published. Valerie Gray was due for some more toys, and Vlad wanted his people well paid and well motivated.

XXX

Later that evening, Vlad pushed open his garage door only to have Kitty dart through it ahead of him, losing herself among his four cars. Vlad ground his teeth and barked for her to get right back here NOW, but Kitty apparently needed a hearing aid of some sort because she didn't respond in the slightest. Which forced Vlad to change to his better half so he reach get under his Mercedes, where she ALWAYS hid EVERY time this happened, and dunk her back in the house.

That small matter attended to, he jumped into his favorite car, the Rolls, and buzzed off to the party with the engine purring like a kitten. A couple times he thought he saw something in his back window, but closer inspection revealed nothing.

XXX

Yeman greeted him with a hearty smile and a firm handshake, his slightly crooked teeth glimmering in the dim light, his slicked back black hair meeting a blue pin-stripe suit at the collar. "Vladimir Masters! Great to see you. We were afraid you weren't coming." A smile flicked onto his face, belying a possibly sublegal knowledge of Vlad's lagging business operations.

"And I heard one of your fool-proof detectors blew some old lady's hand off in India." Vlad returned the smile. "We all have off days."

"That hand was set to explode anyway." Yeman led Vlad up the path to his own mansion, a tall white six-bedroom affair decorated with cherubs and Roman colonnades. The first day he'd bought it, Yeman had drawn an elegantly curled moustache on the white marble angel face above the front enterance because 'he thought it would be funny.' Vlad had seen him lead fellow executives through that door, and had answered, on their inquiry, that it was an Italian angel with an Italian mustache. Yeman always said it with such a perfectly straight face that his guests could only nod uncomfortably and change the subject.

They passed under the Italian angel and into the foyer, where a barman politely asked what they wanted. Vlad put in his order, listening as Yeman explained how an old Indian woman's hand could have ever possibly been 'set to explode.'

"There's a compound that's been commonly thought to be associated with spontaneous combustion."

It was a good thing Vlad hadn't gotten his drink yet, or he would have spewed it all over the floor in his laughter. "You can't blame your explosive products on a phenomenon that doesn't exist!"

Yeman looked over the edge of his own champagne at Vlad, his green eyes narrowing. "You mean like ghosts don't exist? Ghost thieves?"

"What do you mean by that?"

Yeman laughed, draining his drink and setting it down on the table. "Nothing, old man. Don't worry about it. In any case," he said, wiping his hands together. "We've known about a certain chemical for quite a while that pretty much explains the whole spontaneous combustion thing."

Vlad took the drink proffered by the waiter, who scurried off to pamper somebody else. "Is that so?"

"Quite so. It's called inositol, or vitamin 'B' ten. The body produces the stuff naturally, but it's chemically similar to nitroglycerine."

Interesting, but also a transparent weasel maneuver. "I see. So your defective product exploded because she took too many vitamins?"

Yeman snickered. "That's right. You wait. Vitamins will be the death of us all."

Vlad couldn't help laughing as Yeman's angular face split into a sneaky, V-shape grin.

Most people liked Yeman. Publicly, he treated life like a lap dance show to which he held a backstage pass. Privately, his treatment of anything was anybody's guess. He got respect without being respectable; he held animal parties without the baseness of animalism. He was a brazen frat boy with a multi-million dollar empire. Nobody understood him, but everybody liked him.

Before Vlad could pick up the conversation, his animated acquaintance had disappeared to greet the latest arrival to strut through his doors. It was too bad, because Vlad had begun to realize that just about everybody else in the room was an obnoxious jerk. Vlad did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed another drink and drifted over to a cluster of airline executives discussing Homeland Security.

"—and then, and then…" The fat storyteller paused, his cheeks reddening with suppressed chuckles. "And then they made this poor guy—he's about twenty or so, right? Perfectly nice guy. Anyway, turned out he had this big brass belt buckle. So they make him take it off. Right? Right?" The crowd around him nodded at Fatty. Yes, that's right. Who knew what he was talking about, but they'd be darned if he wuzn't right right right about it. "So," Fatty continued. "He takes off the belt and his pants fall off! And he's got these got lil' teddy bears on his boxers! Teddy bears!" The group roared with laughter. Vlad drained his glass. He was almost happy to see Jernigan's sneering face appear in front of him.

"Thank you for finally filling my order."

Vlad gestured magnanimously. "It was my pleasure. Congratulations on finally exorcising your vice president. How many months did that take? Three?" Jernigan colored. "Oh well," Vlad sighed. "You got it done eventually, and that's what counts."

Jernigan said something unprintable and stalked off into the crowd. Vlad snickered to himself and turned to see what the waiter wanted. "Yes?"

"Did you bring a ah, an animal to the party, sir?"

Animal? "No." Not that he knew of, anyway.

"I see." The waiter looked down at the floor, as if the subject might cause him to burst with embarrassment at any moment. He might have been more at ease if Vlad had brought the state police along. "Well, animal ah, erm, 'traces' have been found in your back seat."

Vlad kept a fixed expression. "What sort of traces?"

"The ah, um, well, fecal traces, sir." The waiter wiped sweating hands on his pants. Vlad checked if anybody was eavesdropping, and through some mix of luck and divine mercy, nobody was. "We think it might have been a cat. It does have that rank kind of um, 'cat' smell."

"Fantastic. Please tell me you've at least managed to locate it."

Waiter shook his head. "No, not so far, sir."

Thus Vlad's attention turned from his companions' character—or lack thereof—to the issue of what he'd do to that furry little menace once he caught it. Vlad had been entirely too lenient with Kitty; he could see that now. He'd never liked pets for exactly that reason, after all. Every time you got halfway around to really liking them, they'd go and poop on your Rolls Royce, or something. Naturally, the interior of that car was of the highest-quality leather, too. He'd never hear the end of it back at the dealer's.

As furious as he was with Kitty, Vlad figured the best thing to do would be to find her and arrange for her to be trapped in one of Yeman's more obscure bathrooms. At least that way he could keep the animal from causing him any more trouble. To this end, Vlad wandered nonchalantly from room to room, group to gossiping group. He chatted and exchanged ideas with men in ties while he snuck discreet glances under tables, behind planters filled with ferns or small trees, and among the feet of those milling about the rooms. It was a shame because he'd just started to meet the more enjoyable kinds of people, but of course he couldn't enjoy them because his brazenly colored calico cat was wandering around just waiting to ruin his night.

The sky grew black and starless under the glaring lights of the mansion and the city nearby, and Vlad still hadn't caught sight of Kitty. Yeman sidled up to him and put another drink in his hand. "Fireworks start soon." He grinned broadly. "I pulled out all the stops for this little show. The techies tell me it'll make history."

"I always did enjoy fireworks." With everybody looking up, nobody would be looking down at any wandering kitties.

Yeman slapped his back. "Doesn't everybody? There's not a man alive who doesn't like to watch a good old fashioned explosion." Vlad allowed that was true. Yeman chuckled, not about to let Vlad's mood infringe on his own jolly disposition. "Well, enjoy the party. Fireworks in the backyard in a couple minutes."

"I'll be there." And Vlad was. Deciding that he'd spent enough of his time looking for the cat, he managed to forget about that dumb animal long enough to actually settle in with some fellow ecto-industrialists and enjoy himself, swapping stories of ghosts and inventions with the assembled social pod. One of them had just begun work on a handgun that would split the 'soul' of the ghost from its plasmic powers, a device which Vlad thought might come in useful once it finished up its beta phase. Shortly enough some bells rang in the courtyard, and he followed the general herd of people out into the backyard.

The backyard sat on the top of a hill, providing an expansive view of the flat farmlands and verdant woodlands beyond. A fountain sat in the middle of a circular walkway paved with brick and colored sea glass, its center filled in with gleaming marble tile. A large space of grass separated this sizeable fixture from the trimmed hedges and flowerbeds beyond. By this time of night, the garden was cast in darkness, and the dim twilight brought the stars and the glow of the farmlands below into focus.

The first fireworks went up with a whistle and a flash, bursting into white and red flowers over the dome of the sky. No matter how many times he saw them, Vlad never had lost his childhood fascination with fireworks, and neither had any of the others. Another series flew up trailing glowing white powders of light, bursting into the shape of a dollar sign and an American flag. The guests laughed and clapped at that. Fizzlers and thunderers, starflowers and screaming flares brushed against the night and cast the enamored faces below in glows of royal blue, brilliant scarlet, searing white, lime green and soft lavender. And there, sitting on the very top dry part of an abstract sculpture in the middle of the fountain, Vlad Masters spotted Kitty.

He was mortified. He didn't have a shadow of a guess on how to get Kitty down from there before anybody else noticed. The darkness helped, but eventually somebody would remark on the furry, quiescent shape squatting on the flat top of the harsh granite sculpture.

If Kitty had any idea of the turmoil she was causing Vlad, she gave no sign of it. The cat held stock-still, her eyes fixed up at the sky and the fireworks it hosted. The colors played across the striped patches of golden fur decorating her back and legs, shimmered off the black background, and stained the soft white on her breast and underbelly with whatever color happened to be exploding at the time. Her slitted green eyes followed the shooting rockets up to their apex and watched them detonate, ears pricked, posture impeccably alert.

Vlad waited for somebody to say something, but nobody did. If they saw the cat, they must have assumed it was Yeman's. He wasn't exactly known for pets, but he wasn't exactly known for animal cruelty either. So it was entirely probably that he might have had a cat who liked to sit on the high, dry part of the fountain sculpture and snooze or watch fireworks. Nobody noticed the cat until it started to glimmer.

A streak of white light shot from Kitty's tail to her head. The guests murmured, and fingers were pointed. Yeman's brow furrowed as he declared that no, it wasn't his cat, and the guests oohed and aahed as more streaks of white light flashed faster across Kitty's multicolored coat. Vlad began moving discreetly towards the dark gardens, where he might change unmolested, but what happened next gave him pause.

Kitty began to shimmer like a television with bad reception. Against the backdrop of the fireworks, which were still exploding in the background, the effect was spectacular. Her coat shifted and swirled with colors, the image refining into something far more fascinating, mutating into its own holographic explosion of colors untold, lights that seemed to bright to be real, red explosions the color of blood and streaks of blue darker than any sapphire, bursts of green like teardrop emeralds and slashes of purple which no royal eyes had ever beheld. The colors mingled but never mixed, a Mondrian painting made fluid and screamingly vivid in the dark of twilight against the humans' own fantastic display of color and light. Several present recalled dimly the Hubble pictures of clumping, brilliant nebulae and dust clouds as they looked at Kitty the Supernatural, and as the finale arrived it nearly blinded the guests with the sheer visceral purity of its booming sounds and colors, the cat and the fireworks impeccably synchronized. The audience held its breath in slack-jawed silence before erupting in wild applause.

Vlad stared up at his pet in amazement. Kitty shimmered like a TV and showed her normal fur again, immediately turning to lick her shoulders. Every guest waited for somebody to explain something, but nobody did. Confusion struck. This was not a crowd to let a miracle go uncredited, but at the moment Vlad stepped forward to claim his ownership, so did Jernigan.

"This is a rare specimen captured by me and my men during an expedition in the Amazon. Lovely, don't you think?" He beamed like he'd caught the world in his hand.

Vlad thought his teeth were too bright and longed to relieve him of a couple of them. "You credit-stealing nitwit, that's my animal!"

The crowd OOOooooooh'ed, wrestling match style.

Jernigan tipped his nose in the air and laughed. "Nice try. That animal's mine."

"I'd like to see you take it." There followed an awkward silence in which it was tacitly agreed by all concerned that, no matter how valuable the prize, nobody was going to go fountain-hopping in an expensive suit in front of all their peers.

Yeman had been watching the performance from a second floor patio. "This should be good." Vlad had an impressive arsenal of arrogance, but Jernigan had better pull. He wondered distantly who would win. Maybe they'd get in a fight, get thrown in jail, and he could claim the cat. Yeman wouldn't mind that at all, but he kind of hoped that Vlad would win this one. Jernigan was a Jerkagain.

"I'm telling you that's my cat! I've got the—" Vlad cut himself short. He'd bring up the ordure in his car if it became absolutely necessary, but not before that point.

"You've got the what?" Jernigan snapped. "I've got data logs from every expedition I've ever undertaken." Logs that, his smirk implied, could be doctored effortlessly.

Kitty had squatted down on all fours and was watching the bright human eyes below. The fountain tinkled on the statue below her.

Vlad had an excellent idea. "If she's your cat, call her!"

"You can't be serious. It's a valuable specimen I brought out just for this occasion. Besides, you know as well as anybody that no cat comes when it's called." The certainty had disappeared from his voice.

"Vlad, you call her!" Yeman shouted.

He was only too happy to oblige. "Kitty!" He patted his pants legs. "Yum yum!" As humiliating as that can-opener call was, it was worth the relief that flooded him when Kitty perked up, whiffed the air—probably catching wind of the orderves he'd eaten earlier—and stepped off the fountain to claw her way up Vlad's expensive suit and wrap herself around his shoulders. Vlad gave himself a moment to bask in the joy that Kitty actually had respected him as some kind of authority, even if she still felt cheated about getting no food, then he turned to the equally important business of taunting the strawberry-colored Jernigan.

"Oh, so I guess this means it's not your cat after all."

His finger shot out. "He… you… this is a theft!" Yeman's quiet laughter drifted down from the patio above. Jernigan whirled. "I can produce irrevocable evidence—"

Vlad nodded, caressing Kitty's head with his fingers. "Of course you can."

The laughter rolled around the courtyard, growing from a light chuckle to a hearty roar as it became obvious that Dr. Jernigan, one of the stiffest, most anal people in business, had officially got served. He merely smiled, his eyes bright dagger-points, and excused himself.

Vlad thought he'd take a Rolls full of cat excrement over what just happened to that guy any day. Kitty purred at his ear.

Later that night, with Kitty safely ensconced in a borrowed animal carrier, half the party stopped by to discuss future orders with Vlad. Admiration of his cat was universal. People couldn't describe the experience itself, but comments ran along the lines of 'absolutely incredible.' By the end of the party, Vlad figured his business had a one or two year boom to look forward to, and the first thing he'd do with that money was build Kitty her own custom playroom.

Later on the drive home, Vlad glanced at the carrier sitting in the passenger seat. The car still smelled of cleaning products, but he didn't even mind that. Her display had been incredible, and it amazed him that he hadn't discovered the talent sooner. Kitty was certainly a rare find indeed, and even though the smart thing to do would be to stuff her in some kind of tube and run every test he could think of on her, the mere thought of such a thing horrified him, and the fact that something had actually horrified the great and terrible Vlad "Plasmius" Masters made him uncomfortable. He stole a glance through the wires of the cage, where Kitty slept curled in a ball, her chest rising and falling gently.

Vlad dismissed his concerns. There was nothing wrong with refusing to bother a perfectly nice animal, even if it could be the key to untold millions. What did he need with millions when he already had a couple billion, anyway?

Truth be told, he did kind of have a soft spot for her. No doubt he'd think differently the next time he stepped out of bed and onto Kitty's tail, but for the moment, Kitty was getting fresh turkey and a playroom.

A/N: Review, my pretties! If you have ideas for the future adventures of Vlad and Kitty, let me know. If not, feel free to share your own cat's (mis)adventures, or just leave a friendly word!