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Mission No. 32

Cerinia
Ruined City

"Strange New Worlds"

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Fox followed Krystal down the incline and into the decimated town. He felt uneasy about having her go first, but if she could remotely sense other creatures' minds, she would be safe. Of course he was still figuring out the limits to her powers; Krystal didn't seem to know their full extent either.

Fox had coaxed her to wear actual clothes this time, rather than going around in nothing but his spare t-shirt. Currently she borrowed one of the team's green jumpsuits, which was slightly too big on her lithe frame, as well as a pair of boots. She'd left behind the outer vest when Cerinia's climate proved to be temperate, though Fox kept his on for the extra pockets.

Regardless, Krystal didn't look comfortable. She was still getting used to her new boots and intermittently tripped over rocks and debris. Nor did she enjoy wearing the flight suit; she constantly itched different spots and tugged at the collar.

Near the foot of the hill they reached a steep, dirt incline, and Fox took Krystal's hand. Together they slid down, relying on each other for balance. At the bottom they ran forward a bit to dissipate their momentum, then slowed.

The destruction of the town looked even worse up close.

Fox bit the inside of his cheek. Was Andross responsible for the devastation here, too? Or had something else caused it? More importantly, did it happen before or after his mother arrived? He'd hate to think she escaped Bolse-Y's meltdown only to perish in the destruction of this city instead. That is, if it even was his mother Andross was travelling with…

"You said you sensed someone earlier?" Fox asked. "Are they anywhere nearby?"

The girl's eyes darted between the crumbling buildings. 'I don't think so; I hear their thoughts getting farther away.'

That intel still didn't put Fox at rest; if anything, it made him more paranoid for their safety. Even if there weren't any living creatures nearby, there might be other hazards waiting for them in the ruined city; hazards which her telepathy wouldn't pick up. He scanned every fissure in the pavement, the black windows of every decaying structure they passed, and the dark interiors of the bizarre shops lining the street. In every strange vehicle or dwelling they came upon, Fox expected to find some poor soul's remains—but he never did. Not once did he spot a rotting corpse, a spindly skeleton, or even a conspicuous pile of ash.

"It's completely empty," he murmured. "People must have died here, but it's like all the bodies just vanished…"

Nor could Fox find any rhyme or reason to the destruction; every time he had a theory for how the town was destroyed, he'd spot something new and unusual that turned it on its head. His first thought was that an earthquake had shaken everything to the ground—at least, that's what the crumbling buildings and fissures in the streets led him to believe. But in other places there were stains of black ash in vaguely-animal shapes, as well as charred plants and burned wood. That suggested an armed conflict with bombs and other explosives, but if so, where were the bullet holes, spent shells, and pockmarks?

They only stumbled on more and more unnatural signs defying explanation as they went. Metal fence posts were uprooted and embedded in walls clear across the street, sometimes two or even three stories up. Entire convenience stores were uprooted and redeposited upside-down. Lanes of the Cerinians' odd vehicles had melted together and stretched like vines throughout the city.

Mom, whatever happened here, I hope you're alright…

Fox awkwardly climbed over a rift in the cement sidewalk. "This isn't natural," he muttered, "or even possible with the modern weapons Lylat has. The hell could have done this?"

Krystal scaled to the top of a ridge in front of Fox, sharing her thoughts with him. 'Well, I'm glad you're just as lost as me. I don't recognize anything at all—'

Through their mental connection Fox felt Krystal's muscles tighten as if they were his own. Then her thoughts were torn from his, and he dove forward to catch her as soon as she fell off the ridge in the sidewalk. She crashed into his arms, and Fox staggered back under her sudden weight. Krystal got a mouthful of his down vest in surprise.

"Whoa, you okay?" Fox chuckled nervously.

"Yes," came her muffled voice, head buried in his chest. 'Sorry, I just lost my balance. These boots are so cumbersome.'

"I understand," he admitted, still supporting her with his arms, "but it's better than cutting your feet on all these sharp edges. You'll get used to them."

Fox trailed off, but the vixen made no move to lift herself. She held onto Fox's chest, her face pressed against his soft vest for an increasingly awkward amount of time. Fox almost said something, but finally she righted herself. 'Let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.' She didn't even acknowledge the moment they shared between them, and he felt a bit relieved.

"Yeah, let's beat it. Are we still headed in the right direction?"

Krystal nodded. 'The thought whispers are coming from over there. They're very faint, so the owner must still be far away.'

They hurried through the rest of the alien buildings, eager to leave the haunting town; even the ones still left standing possessed a surreal, unnatural quality.

When they reached the other side of the city, they stopped for a moment to catch their breath—but it was just as quickly stolen again when they saw what lay before them.

A blanket of white snow stretched into the horizon, shimmering in the early morning light. It was painted with a myriad of oranges and pinks and blues, reminding Fox of a blank canvas on which the morning sun could freely paint. Odd, it didn't even feel remotely cold right now.

When they descended the next hill and came upon the white expanse, Fox saw that it wasn't snow at all, but clear grains of sand. They were so pure and polished that they looked like a sea of sugar.

"What's this?" Krystal asked.

"I think it's some kind of desert…" Fox summoned up several relevant images and mentally passed them to the vixen. "I've never seen one like this before."

'We'll have to cross it to find whoever's out there. Are deserts dangerous?'

Fox weighed his response. "Potentially. You can quickly lose your sense of direction, get lost, and go in circles. You can die of thirst and starvation. Sometimes you might get bit by a poisonous snake. In Lylat you might run into bandits or other criminals, but I really have no idea what to expect here. Regardless, that's in the same direction as the coordinates they sent us, so we're headed there anyway. I think we have to brave it."

Together they stepped onto the sand, their heavy boots sinking a few inches with each step. At least it wasn't plagued by ion storms like Titania's wastes or boiling hot like Papetoon's dusty outback. Even so, it seemed just as expansive and infinite, and just as intimidating to cross.

After an hour of walking, they crested a dune and looked down on yet another strange sight; one that somehow topped the rest of what they'd seen that day. To Fox, it looked like a modern art display; the sand was melted into a clear glass floor in a large, circular plain. Several statues stood menacingly around the edges, though there was hardly a through-line that connected them.

The first of the statues they passed was a large crystalline stone with thousands of rivulets tunneled into its sides. It looked like a piece of volcanic rock, or perhaps a massive ocarina with innumerable holes peppering it. Whenever a breeze blew and passed through the tunnels, it played a collection of haunting, yet beautiful notes.

The second statue looked like a giant plant, the likes of which Fox had never seen before. Its foliage was composed of funnel-shaped leaves; they collected morning dew or rain water and let the moisture drip into a variety of bowls carved in the glass below. Each branch was at a different height, and each bowl was either shallow or deep, resulting in a myriad of frequencies the drops achieved.

A third statue reminded Fox of a giant wind-chime; it towered above the vulpines, with the chimes made from a polished material that resembled ivory or mother of pearl. Intermittently they'd bump into one another, resulting in a beautiful gold or silver tone that rung out between the surrounding structures.

"Wow… it's so pretty," Krystal whispered.

Fox, on the other hand, was unable to enjoy the concert. He was too weirded-out by all the other strange things they'd seen that day, as well as the instruments' massive sizes. Who could have made something so large, and so bizarre?

Krystal's eyes widened when she spotted something over Fox's shoulder. "Look!" she exclaimed, pointing behind him. Fox followed the direction of her finger and started.

There in the distant sky floated an otherworldly creature; it was cephalopodic, with dozens of long, wispy tendrils that stretched for miles on end, made of silvery ribbon that glimmered in the noon sunlight. The light display dazzled the two vulpines, but its sheer size also made their knees tremble; it stretched longer than several Cornerian cruisers laid end-to-end. One side was definitely the main body, but they couldn't make out features like eyes or even a head; it was only made up of more, tangled ribbon.

Worried that it might see them, Fox grabbed Krystal's hand and pulled her into the safety of the "ocarina." Together they crawled into one of the holes along the side, poking their heads just enough out of cover to watch the beast. Fox's mind tickled as Krystal riffled through his memories, desperately searching for anything the creature could be. But all either of them could come up with was ribbon on gifts Fox had received as a boy, and octopi he'd seen at the Cornerian National Aquarium.

"We'll wait here until it passes," he whispered, even though at this distance it could never hear him. In fact, he slowly realized most of his fears were unfounded. To the creature, both of the foxes were little more than ants; it probably didn't notice them at all.

For a while they watched in awe as the bundle of shinning tendrils slowly swam across the horizon—but it didn't go unchallenged, for the ground began to shake, and Krystal grabbed onto Fox as their statue shook from the trembling.

Beneath the cephalopod, the white dunes erupted. The clouds of sand dissipated to reveal an equally-massive insect with multiple, onyx-black segments. Its back end remained buried in the sand, but its head looked like a giant pair of scissors; even the finger holes seemed to be represented in the design of its carapace. The monster reared up on dozens of hind legs, its head reaching until its dual blades snapped closed around the first creature; it was as if the second creature's sole design and purpose was to kill the other.

The snap itself sent a shockwave through the sky and desert, buffeting Krystal and Fox with wind and dust. The cephalopod screamed in a metallic, high-pitched wail, though it was unclear where the odd, synthetic screech originated from in its anatomy. Meanwhile the insect folded its legs and fell back into the dunes, dragging its prey down with it. Their collision with the ground sent a second thunderous boom through the desert, kicking up another cloud of sand. But when the dust settled, the two foxes couldn't see strand nor feeler of the two creatures; they had vanished back into the dunes.

A minute of utter silence passed until the Fox deemed everything safe. Cautiously they crept out of the hole and brushed themselves off.

"Okay… what the hell just happened?" Fox turned and exchanged glances with Krystal. "Please tell me you saw that too! I didn't hallucinate all of it… did I? It's been a few days since I've had my…"

Krystal shook her head. 'No, you didn't dream it; I saw it too, and… I feel sad because of it. That poor creature was only bringing beauty to the world, but the other one had to destroy it. How is there any meaning in its death?'

Fox didn't answer, but he had other worries on his mind; another such beast could easily be hiding underneath the very sand they stood on. At least the orchestra of statues was still standing after all this time. "Say, Krystal, did you detect thoughts in either of those creatures? They were real, right?"

'They weren't just… "mirages," as you call them. They had thoughts, but they were only simple ones. While they were very loud thoughts, they were only a few words repeated over-and-over again, as if someone else shouted them into a canyon and left, and they've been echoing there ever since. Their thought-speech wasn't intelligent like ours.'

Fox whistled. "Now if only Falco or Slippy were here to see this; they'd never believe me if I told them…" He gestured for Krystal to follow him. "Well, come on, let's keep moving. And pray we don't run into any more of those things…"

After a second hour spent trekking through the vacant sands they came upon another structure. Already, Fox had an uncomfortable feeling in his gut.

The obsidian cube towered several hundred feet above them, but the oddest thing about it was that it somehow balanced on the very tip of one of its corners. The sharp point only barely touched the sands beneath it, yet not a gust of wind could topple it over; it simply defied all laws of gravity, remaining perfectly balanced.

As they approached the cube, they could see it wasn't smooth at all, but rough and filled with detail. Countless ridges and holes ran across its six faces, but it was hard to discern any pattern from this distance.

Fox squinted so he could see better; it vaguely reminded him of when he'd left a pile of army figures on the pavement as a child, and the sunlight had melted them together…

When he realized what the carved forms really were, his stomach felt sick. He grabbed Krystal's arm and pulled her back from the monolith. "Krystal, let's go this way—"

"Why? What's wrong?" Her voice rose in pitch as she craned her head to see over Fox's shoulder.

"Please don't look," the todd begged, tugging her away. "It's not something you should see! Come on, we'll go around."

"Okay, if you say so…"

Reluctantly, the vixen went along with him, and together they skirted the object. She still cast sidelong glances at it, but from this distance she wasn't able to make out any significant details, as Fox intended.

After a few seconds she grew curious and peeked into Fox's thoughts, but the vulpine shook his head and internally screamed. "NO! …No. You don't want to see what I saw. Please don't go looking through my memories, either. Respect my privacy on this one thing. I'm only doing this for you, Krystal."

The vixen withdrew from his head and shrunk back. "Gomenshuld," she whispered.

"Thanks," Fox breathed in relief.

They continued on, the todd marching resolutely forward. They left the monolith behind, but Fox would never be rid of its memory; it was permanently ingrained in his consciousness for the rest of his days. He couldn't scrub their image from his head: the tortured, twisted forms chaotically linked together, their suffering and ultimate fate memorialized for eternity.

In the end, he'd found the town's inhabitants.

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Falco piloted his Arwing through a sea of murky, Zonessian clouds that forced him to rely entirely on his instruments. He had the crate of crystal lysergic acid stashed away in Fox's cargo hold; the labels changed, and a fake layer of tools beneath the lid in case any nosy officials pried it open. He was headed for District 13, the floating city he was born and raised in—if growing up on the streets could be considered a proper "raising."

Like most cities on the (now) hundred-percent ocean planet, District 13 was an artificial island that floated on the waves. It followed a cyclic current around Zoness; large flotation devices hidden beneath the grid-like streets kept the city afloat, while underwater propellers corrected its course if need be. But on the surface, the city resembled any other conventional, run-down port: docks and wharfs around the entire coast, packed with shipping containers, freighters, and loading cranes; blocky, brutalist architecture made from lightweight concrete and painted in colorful graffiti; and a spaceport bustling with activity on the eastern side.

But of course, that was how he last remembered it. He left over three years ago, and the whole Lylat War happened during that time. He'd flown one single mission back here with Star Fox, and it hadn't been pretty. The invasion was total and merciless given Zoness' proximity to Venom at the start of the conflict. They defiled her waters with toxic waste; they desecrated her shipping lanes with vessels carrying instruments of war; and they ravaged her cities with indiscriminate attacks, beating their occupants into submission.

He felt anxious during his descent, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. If the shipping lanes looked like that, what would his hometown be like? What was left? Would he even recognize it anymore?

He didn't want to be back here. He'd spent most of his childhood trying to leave this place. 13 was only an ideal vacation destination for rich tourists—not poor natives like he was. There were only enemies, filth, and broken promises here for him—not to mention, painful memories.

Still, Falco continued his descent. Peppy and Fox were relying on him. He needed to call in a favor with an old friend to get the lowdown on these chemicals. He'd just go in, get the shit analyzed, and get out. It wasn't a triumphant return; he was just passing through, and no one he'd left here years ago would know.

The haze was thinning out, so Falco tightened his grip on the flight stick, bracing himself. Then all at once, his Arwing broke through cloud cover, tendrils of fog still clinging to its wings.

His heart fell.

The compact metropolis of District 13 lay sprawled beneath him, as if someone had knocked it down in a street fight. It looked terribly beaten up, with bruises of black soot from bomb residue all over. Blocky concrete buildings lay in toppled ruins like caved-in noses and broken teeth. Oil spills and leaking sewage were its blood and sweat; hazy smog, its dying breath.

Falco winced. Damn, this bad, huh?

He could barely tell the planet from Venom. The once verdant seas were now a dark, sickly green. A dour haze filled the sky, making the usually colorful sunrise he remembered lifeless and gray. Falco felt his skin crawl beneath his plumage at the sight. And all it took Andross was one year.

…But while the city was down, it wasn't out for the count. As he flew nearer, he spotted the inhabitants still milling about the surface with their daily lives. Smoke from kitchens and trash fires rose into the air, proving it still breathed. Buses and diesel motor vehicles puttered along the streets, ensuring the city had pulse. No referee would declare it a KO yet; 13 still had fighting spirit—and that's why, deep down, Falco still rooted for the city.

The pheasant piloted his Arwing to the spaceport on the east side. A variety of ships sat next to each other in disorderly rows, ranging in size from small personal craft like his own to larger transports; though the behemoth-sized shipping cruisers were docked in the adjacent water. He landed between a small commercial ship and a sloppily-repainted fighter craft that looked eerily similar to a Venomian ship. Probably was, but who cared out here.

Before disembarking, he searched the cockpit of Fox's Arwing; he didn't want to leave anything valuable that could easily be carried off by a thief. Fox kept a tidy ship—far tidier than his. Wasn't much he'd left besides a half-full waste bin and a hidden stash of Playtodd holozines. While rooting through the glove compartment, however, his feathered hand closed around a bottle that made a sharp rattling sound. Falco pulled it out and snorted; it was an orange-brown bottle of Fox's migraine pills.

"Heh, Fox was always looking for these," he quietly chuckled to himself—but he stuffed them in his jacket pocket for good measure.

Falco popped the canopy and climbed out. He landed on the gravel lot, his boots crunching the stones beneath. Then with his wrist unit he closed the canopy and locked the ship. He glanced around suspiciously, noticing the curious looks the Arwing garnered from passersby. Most were covered in grease, and many wore frayed clothes. Thinking better of it, Falco pressed the lock command again. Then a third time. And a fourth. Okay, a fifth just to be safe. He didn't want the drugs being stolen, and Fox would kill him if he ever found out something happened to his prized Arwing—though Falco realized it didn't really matter anymore. Fox was gone: light years away from Lylat, so maybe he should get used to flying his Arwing from now on…

The avian kept his head low as he marched to the north gate. He joined a line of miscreants waiting to exit beneath a raised steel portcullis. Transport Bureau guards occasionally checked their baggage for illicit goods, considering the sewers of 13 were home to a sizable black-market hub. But of course, all it took was a discretely-slipped cred stick, and Falco and his blaster mysteriously got through free of suspicion.

After ducking beneath the raised portcullis, he was finally back on the streets. In many ways, it was the same city Falco had left over three years ago. The same grime covered walls, trash-strewn alleys, and clogged sewers. It was just… everything seemed so much worse now. Buildings were bombed out, entire homes and offices lay destroyed, and piles of crumbled bricks were swept together on every street corner. The bright paint and graffiti on the brutalist concrete walls peeled off from a year of acid rain, revealing stained, dreary gray beneath.

Falco's face clenched; the odor in the air was almost unbearable. Many people he passed wore surgical masks over their faces, or even gas masks, having adapted by now. It was especially unnerving whenever a native avian passed by with a full beak mask, appearing like a harbinger of the plague. The seas and atmosphere were so polluted that a thick gray smog hung low over the entire city; he couldn't even see a full block in any direction.

Outside the spaceport, the oppressive Transport Bureau officers were traded for common street thugs keeping the peace—the kind that aggressively guarded their turf and cared far more about their jobs than salaried cops did. You'd do well not to walk too close or look them in the eye, unless you wanted to start something. He caught sight of different gang symbols signaling their allegiance: matching face tattoos, cross-shaped scars on foreheads, silver earrings, white bandanas—once he thought he even saw a Black Dragonfish tattoo on someone's wrist, but he knew he'd probably imagined it; a group like them rarely had to show themselves on the surface.

But what worried him was how infrequent these other markings were, compared to the far-more prevalent, claw-shaped, 'G' symbol.

Feeling uneasy, Falco folded an arm over his beak. While he used his jacket sleeve as a sort of filter to breathe through, it was really an excuse to keep his head down and his face covered so that no one recognized him—not only from his past as a member of Star Fox, but he'd also gained a certain level of infamy on the local streets.

Dammit, he could be anywhere else in the system besides here. He really should just head straight to his old cook and drop off the sample before escaping this floating scrapyard as soon as possible… but something made him linger. Something made him wander through the old neighborhood, prowling the streets like another ghost: perhaps a morbid curiosity to see how much of his childhood remained.

Under all the rubble and new trash, his old hometown was certainly there—but he had to dig to find any familiar landmark. Coats of new graffiti covered the walls, replacing the tapestries and murals he'd left as a kid. The carcasses of broken down cars littered the streets, rotting and bleeding rust. The streets were mostly occupied by trash—trash like he used to be, and maybe still was. People walked by like zombies, without a spark of life. He could tell many of them had turned to drugs since the war; it wasn't too odd to spot a shady group making an exchange in an alley, or drugged-out individuals lying in the gutter like war corpses.

On accident, he bumped into one of them. He grunted an apology, steadying the person he collided with, only to find the robin staring past him with a blank look. Falco's eyes fell to the crook of his elbow, which was mangy and devoid of feathers; the skin beneath was cracked. "Scales," they called it: a side effect of the most popular drug on the black market, Allusion. It sent you straight back to the past if you took a large enough dose, painting the inside of your eyelids with memory after memory. But the skin cracked around the injection point—not to mention it had a long list of other, more lethal side effects.

Falco slowly released the bum, then stepped aside. The robin stumbled forward, probably remembering the streets as they once were—which would explain why he tripped over a pile of bricks that simply hadn't been there a year ago.

Now Falco understood why so many people were taking it.

The avian continued strolling down memory lane, revisiting his old, childhood haunts—but without the rose-tinted glasses of the drug everyone else seemed to be on. He visited the bridge his old street gang used to meet beneath; it was collapsed, and most of the graffiti he'd left with his friends was sprayed over by younger street rats. He found their favorite skate park cracked from the impacts of bombs. He passed by the playground they frequented covered in rubble and debris; jungle gym, monkey bars, swingsets, slides, and see-saws mangled and twisted by the weight. Now they poked up like metal weeds between the stones.

Finally he stopped by the orphanage he and Katt had grown up at. A big crater sat in the middle like Andross's over-sized head had taken a bite out of it, having stopped smoldering long ago. The dorm rooms he remembered; completely bombed out.

Shit…

For several minutes, he just stood there and took it in, counting how many settings for his favorite memories were now… gone. He didn't even think they were that special until now, but realizing he could never go back…

"F-Falco?" a young voice asked from behind him.

The avian turned to come face-to-face with… empty air. It wasn't until he looked down that he noticed the short feline. He stood a head shorter than Falco and had baby-blue fur beneath his stained white jacket. A single tuft of yellow hair curled at the top of his head.

Falco smiled. "Hey, how ya doing, Kitt?"

The cat placed his paws on his head and shook vigorously. "Holy shit, you're back! This is awesome! I need to tell like, everyone! …But, are you okay?"

The pheasant raised an eyebrow. "Huh? Whaddya mean?"

"Dude, you're crying!"

Falco sniffed, raising a wing to his eyes and feeling the tears that had leaked from them. Well that's embarrassing. He swiftly wiped them away. "Nah. Still getting used to the shit air here. Agitating as fuck."

When Falco finished drying his eyes and looked back, he saw the kid unabashedly staring at him. He felt more uncomfortable with each passing second. "…What?" he finally asked.

"You're back!" Kitt exclaimed. "I just… wow! A real, live hero standing in front of me—and my old leader, too!"

"Aight, well, you don't have to stare at me like that. Feels like I've got somethin' on my face."

"You do! It's fame and… accomplishments!"

"Fuck is that supposed to—?"

"Tell me everything!" Kitt pleaded. "You must have had so many bad-ass adventures since you've been gone, flying with an actual merc team instead of riding with, well, us."

Falco tugged at his jacket collar, looking around awkwardly. "Yeah, I got up to some crazy stuff here and there… may have earned a few medals from the mutts… but I'm more interested in lil' ol' District 13. How've things been going since I left?"

Kitt's ears flattened. "Oh. Well, not too good."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yeah. With you gone, Grimmer's gang rose to power. They aren't just a bunch of street kids acting all tough, either; now they're a serious gang, and they're selling Allusion on the streets. Grimmer basically runs the North End now, and no one can challenge him."

Falco internally shuddered a bit, not having had the best experiences with the lizard as a youth—another reason he didn't like reptiles. "Then what happened to the Free Birds? How's our gang holding up?"

"There's no gang anymore. Split up as soon as you left."

Falco felt ashamed, knowing it was his fault. "Well, is everyone doing okay, at least?"

"I guess. Sis still works at the shop, Mouser and Bowser sell weapons below, Shani works at the docks, and Pukes does research for the Bureau of Reclamation—they're the ones in charge of purifying the water after… you know. Everyone's mostly moved on from the Free Birds. Haven't ridden their bikes together since." Then his ears poked up hopefully. "But why? Why you asking? You're not thinkin' about reforming the gang, are you?!"

Falco opened his beak, but his words caught in his throat; it was hard to face the bright, youthful glow in the kid's eyes. He scratched behind his head and looked away. "Well, uh, nah. Doesn't sound like they'd be interested in following me again when they've all got jobs like that. I came here for another reason anyway. See," he lowered his voice, "I stumbled upon some drugs that might be valuable. Sorta fell into my lap, just like that," he snapped. "I've never seen anything like them before, so I need Pukes to analyze them. She still have her lab?"

"Yeah! But if you're headed to Pukes' place, can I tag along with you?"

Falco tilted his head back and forth, weighing the option. "You know, I think as long as I'm here, I… I oughta pay your sister a visit first."

Kitt looked down at the sidewalk, his voice mopey. "…I don't think that's a good idea. You know Sis won't be too happy to see you."

Falco was worried that would be the case; his gut clenched up in fear as he made the decision.

"I know that—but take me to Katt anyway."