A silver car lurched slightly as it drove onto a bridge. One of the passengers inside, a calico cat, shifted uncomfortably. She swapped which of her legs were crossed, putting her right ankle on her left knee. She twirled her tail, agitated, and sat down the newspaper she was reading to look out the window. Above the bridge were two green signs: one pointed east and read Chester, the other pointed west and read Downtown Biggers.
"So this is where you live," the cat trilled, her voice airy and high-pitched.
"Well," answered the other passenger, this woman a pug. "Across the Hudson, anyway."
The calico pinned her ears. "You know what I meant," she hissed. She pulled open her newspaper again, only to immediately flip it back to the front page. Beneath the Total Telegram logo was a gray-scale photo of a dog with black ears, shaking the hand of a short man with a mustache. The calico smirked and opted to forego reading the name of the article to skip straight into the content, particularly the byline: By Polly S. Purebred. She smirked.
While the calico reread the paper, her fellow passenger was leaning against the car door, holding her head in one hand as she gazed out the window. The river they were driving over was coming to an end, and the car bumped again as they met dry land.
The calico folded the newspaper onto her lap. "Do you remember the plan, my dear?" she asked, turning to the pug. Her dead-grass eyes danced over the pug's hunched form, but she only acknowledged it with a twitch of her whiskers.
"Yep," the pug answered noncommittally. "You want me to use that pretty little reporter to get all the secrets of Biggers' beloved hero, Underdog," she spat out the name like it was a poison on her tongue.
The calico huffed, this time twitching her whiskers with annoyance. "You could put a bit more enthusiasm into it," she commented, "My plan requires you and your acting to succeed."
The pug rolled her eyes. "Whatever. You know I'm only doing this for you cuz my mom owed you that favor."
"Oh," the calico chuckled cruelly, tilting her head to hold in one hand. "Yes, of course. You know, dear Olive…"
The pug's ears pricked at the sound of her name.
"You're going to have to put some effort in," the cat snarled, "if you really want to pay off your mother's debt to me. I have other ways to make you pay if I deem this insufficient."
Olive's brows furrowed, in slight fear, or maybe just confusion. She heard a deep, low-frequency growl resonating in the very base of her ear, like a bumblebee, and turned to glance at the driver above the unbroken row of seats. The driver adjusted the mirror slightly, catching the reflection of her face—a gray face twisted in anger, with pointy, serrated teeth and one yellow eye. Olive gripped the front of her sweater as she felt her heart pump out of it, bringing her gaze to her knees.
The calico huffed, "That's what I thought." She returned her attention out the window, lifting her head slightly to look past the shoulders of her driver. Suddenly her ears pricked. "Stop right here, Dulcet," she commanded.
The driver did just that, shifting the car down a gear and turning the wheel until the car paused on the road's shoulder. The cat didn't wait for the driver to get out and open her door; she was in so much of a hurry that she opted to do it herself. She rounded the back of her flawless car, stepping onto the grass beside the road and staring determinedly ahead. Her hands were clenched into fists along her sides.
Ahead of her stood a green sign, low to the ground and lovingly decorated with brown rocks and well-trimmed, flowery bushes. In stiff font, it read, Welcome to Biggers City!
The cat took in a breath so deep it puffed her chest out. Behind her, Olive and the driver had slowly gotten out of the car to observe what she was up to.
"I'm back!" the cat yowled to the sky, extending her arms out. Her mouth was curled in a wide smile, an evil expression on her face. Her hands fell, and her ear twitched calmly. "I wonder if they've missed me."
The calico started to giggle, her shoulders jittering with each movement. Olive squared her jaw, looking over the top of the pale car, at its driver. She remained expressionless, so Olive simply pursed her lips and continued to stare at her boss in confusion.
"Biggers City!" the calico announced, her voice reverberating slightly off the buildings and blacktop. "Meet Candy Valentine."
"Sweet Polly! Sweet Polly!"
Polly scratched her fluffy ear, hearing the noise of her boss before she had even entered the studio. She stifled a sigh and pulled open the big wood-and-glass door labeled TELEVISION STATION WTTV (O.J. Skweez, President). The weight pressed on her arm, and the door almost swung back on her as she froze, taking in the sights in front of her.
The studio, usually a pristine place of shiny, smooth floors and shinier, smoother desks, was in a state of disrepair. Polly felt her heart rate pick up a few beats as she looked around. A crowd of cameramen had taken over a table, meticulously picking apart three of their cameras. One lifted up a black chunk, film falling from it like entrails. Polly spotted her prime camerawoman, Lois Loon, walking beside fellow reporter Coleen Collie, both holding big stacks of papers and neither looking happy about it—really, Polly thought they seemed more flustered than anything.
"Polly!"
The warm pressure of a hand wrapped around Polly's arm. A bolt of fear shot through her, but inside, she recognized the voice. When she looked down, sure enough, she saw her boss, OJ Skweeze. He was a stout red panda dressed in a freshly-pressed orange suit, though at the moment, he was so frantic he was just a scarlet-colored blur.
"There you are! Finally!" he said in his shrill way, "Now, I have this pamphlet for you, and it's very important that you look it over and memorize it and act it out perfectly, or all of this is going to fall apart!"
He shoved the pamphlet in her face and kept talking, but his voice became so high-pitched and fast that Polly couldn't really understand him. She flipped through the pages with her thumb, making a soft breeze on her face, but didn't actually read anything inside it.
"Calm down, Mr. Skweeze," Polly said slowly. OJ paused his speech, but his eyes were still wild, and his face was still twisted. Polly looked across the studio again and asked, "What… happened here? Did some villain come by and attack?"
"No!" OJ exclaimed, "Nononono, nothing crazy like that happened." He anxiously scratched the back of his neck. He took a deep breath and started to ramble again, "The owner of our studio is coming, and I have to make sure everything is perfect for her arrival!"
Polly blinked, tilting her head slightly to the side. "I thought you were the owner of this studio."
"What?!" OJ shouted, "No! Whatever gave you that idea?"
Polly glanced around again, her top teeth drying to her bottom lip. OJ's outburst had brought attention to the two of them, and there was no person Polly spotted who didn't have their eyes turned onto him.
"Um…" she ventured, her voice breaking the still silence, "You're the only boss we've ever had? Or heard of?"
OJ let out a loud, droning noise—something like a growl or a whimper, or a mix of both—and knocked his fists against his head. Polly thought he resembled Underdog for a moment.
"No!" OJ exclaimed, "I'm half of a president, maybe a manager at maximum; no! The owner is coming, she's the real president, and the CEO, and the founder, and all the people who are higher up than I am!"
At some point in his rant, he had gripped Polly by the shoulders and started to shake her. He stopped as his speech did, and Polly stumbled slightly, her eyes rolling. Polly groaned and reached for her head as the world swayed around her.
"Um…" she closed her eyes for a moment, then cleared her throat. When she looked back down at her boss, his face didn't look like it was swirling in on itself. She wanted to say something else, but before she could even see her boss correctly, the pamphlet was shoved in her face again.
"Now, please! I need you to follow this, Polly, it's just a script, like always!"
"It's not all a script!" one of her coworkers cried out, and suddenly the crowd was in uproar.
Polly grit her teeth. This was exactly what she didn't want to walk into at work. OJ had told her nothing about some higher-up coming when she was in this morning. Finally, she opened her pamphlet to see what OJ wanted her to do.
You are my best reporter, Polly, so I expect that you know what to do: be SWEET; fawn over Under; bring coffee...
Polly squinted as she read, and immediately understood why her coworkers were rioting.
"Why in the world did you tell us to clean these cameras inside and out?" One of the cameramen, Clark Canine, was complaining. He held a plastic square in one black, ink-stained hand with film wrapped around his arms. "We don't know how to put this back together! We just hit the record button and put the film in!"
"I can't just take anyone up in my helicopter!" shouted Baldy Eagle, Polly's favorite pilot, "It's for news, not pleasure!"
"Don't be so mushy with Daniel," read fellow reporter Colleen, her voice low. She shoved the paper against her side and looked down at OJ, her eyes wet with tears. "Is that really what you think about us?"
OJ tried to wave his arms down and shout to his workers to calm down, but everyone's complaints only got louder and drowned him out. Polly kept reading her paper, crunching it between her hands as she grew more and more upset with it. Soon, she threw it down with a loud whip through the air.
She tapped her foot on the ground and shouted, "HUSH!"
Most of the dogs in the crowd immediately froze, with big eyes and pointed ears, all looking at Polly. The ones who weren't canines soon noticed and quieted down as well.
She cleared her throat and flattened her lapel. "Thank you," she told the crowd, then she focused in on OJ. The poor creature looked desperately frightened, and even though he stood straight up with his hands raised, his quivering lip gave his fear away. "I'm sure everything will be fine the way it already is, Mr. Skweeze," she said diplomatically, "We've run just fine for this long. And after all, the president has trusted you to care for the studio this long; I'm sure he'd like to see how it's really working."
"Yes, I would."
A new voice, one Polly didn't recognize, drifted over the scene. It was more shrill and higher-pitched than OJ's, and it sent a shiver down Polly's spine like a melting icicle. All eyes, including Polly's, turned to the door.
Padding out of the doorway was a short cat—about the size of Simon Barsinister, Polly thought—in a cute, raspberry-rose suit. Her plush-looking fur was dappled with striped patches of blush pink and warm fallow-brown, and her ears were hole-punched with heart-shaped rips. Polly squinted, and thought the cufflinks that she fiddled with were also heart-shaped. Polly supposed, though she wasn't sure, that this was the owner that everyone was making such a ruckus about.
Behind the owner, on her right side, was a great white shark who was almost shaped like a perfect rectangle. She wore a black suit and sunglasses that rode low on her muzzle. The person on the cat's left made Polly's face heat up slightly.
She was a fawn pug, the traditional kind, with a few inches of muzzle. She was tall for her breed, and leggy too; she wore a black pencil skirt with tights, and a cable-knit red—Underdog red—sweater that folded against her hips and chest in such a way that—
—that… Polly realized she shouldn't be thinking about. So she wrenched her eyes up to the pug's face and tried to pretend her mind hadn't wandered. Unfortunately, the pug met her gaze and slipped her a smile—a mischievous sort where the top fangs are always the main focus—and it only made Polly's heart beat faster.
Luckily, by that time, OJ had gotten his mind straight and met the owner where she was standing. "Candy Valentine!" he announced, his shrill voice booming off the glassy everything. He shook her hand with both of his, "It's been so long since I've seen you, how have things been?"
Candy Valentine's ear twitched, and her gaze softened slightly at OJ. "With all due respect, we can catch up later," she said, slipping her little paw out of his grasp so easily that OJ continued to shake the air. "I'm quite eager to learn how everything is going, I hear we have some real starlets these days."
Polly flushed, twirling a coil of fur hanging from her ear.
"Yes!" OJ agreed, "We do! Now let's see here, uh… oh, right! Our Colleen Collie, our Patty Poodle, our Bruce Bumpers, our, uh… oh! Cluck Kent, of course, and… ah! How could I forget!" He turned around and extended an arm out, shouting, "Our Sweet Polly Purebred!"
She hoped her face wasn't a horrible red.
"Why don't you all come up here and meet our owner?" he asked, "As for the rest of you... ah… you know your jobs! Get to them!"
And the crowd dispersed without a word—only the clicking noises of their shoes and nails against the polished floor.
Polly kept a slow pace across the room, letting her fellow reporters push past her. She had enough stardom, what with the whole… superhero situation… that she could afford to let her coworkers have some spotlight. Each reporter shook Candy Valentine's hand, introducing themselves and their department. Bruce tried to joke with her about the traffic, but her shark rolled her eyes and pushed up her sunglasses, so Polly figured that was her valet.
Jeez! her mind exclaimed, a valet! She thought only kings and the ultrarich had valets… but then, maybe that's why the owner had never visited before, she didn't need to. Polly lined up behind fellow field reporter Patty Poodle and tried to stand up straight. She brushed some dust off her skirt as they made small talk, but within only a moment it seemed, Patty turned around and Polly felt the hot eyes of the big boss fall on her.
"Sweet Polly Purebred!" she exclaimed, extending her arm out.
"Ms. Candy Valentine," Polly returned politely. She forced a small smile across her face and shook her hand in the same awkward, two-handed way as OJ did. Luckily, Candy Valentine's own left hand came slapping down against the back of hers, and suddenly it wasn't so awkward anymore. Her hands were thin, cold, and bony; and up close, Polly could make out the impression of forehead creases, crow's feet, and smile lines. She might have been as old as Simon Barsinister was too, but clearly her fur helped with appearances.
"Please, just Valentine is quite enough," she said, and Polly nodded furiously. "Now, you have to tell me, Sweet Polly Purebred can't be your real name, can it?"
Polly giggled, "It's really Polly Sweet Purebred, but OJ thought it would be better for my image if the Sweet came first."
"You must admit it did," Valentine laughed along, "You're the youngest reporter I've ever seen, you're not even thirty, are you?"
"Twenty-eight!" Polly said proudly.
Valentine chuckled, "You're pretty famous, even outside of this town, you know. You really are the Sweet Polly, lover of that great hero Underdog, aren't you?"
This time, Polly knew her face had turned red. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw Bruce and Colleen cast eachother a glance, then shift on their feet. Patty glanced down and twirled her hair, while Cluck crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
"Lover is a bit misleading!" she exclaimed, much too loud, she realized, as it came out of her mouth. She felt hot stares land on her back from the workers milling about the studio. Her vision started to spin, though she tried to laugh through it. "Wh-why would you ever think that?"
"Oh," Valentine said.
Polly had heard the exact sound from her mother a thousand times before—the sound of I know something you don't. Polly did! Her mind scrambled, she just, ah... well...
The pretty pug behind Valentine glanced to her side and started counting on her fingers. "Well, he always answers your calls, you're so touchy-feely with him," her eyes met Polly's, a lovely shade of mantis green, "and doesn't he crash on your couch?"
"That's quite enough, Olive," Valentine growled, snapping her head over her shoulder.
Olive —that might've been a good name for the color of her eyes, Polly thought. Then her mind's picture was mean to her, and she saw Underdog's green eye—really nothing at all like Olive's were, and her face got a little hotter. That's when she remembered not to stare.
Olive had crossed her arms, and Valentine turned her attention to the other reporters.
"I'd hate to keep you all here any longer," she said with a kind nod, "I'm sure you're all very busy with your reports. OJ said he'd find an empty room around here for me to set up an office in. I hope none of you mind me keeping an eye on things."
Polly was the last to shake her head and agree, her mind too stuffed-up with thoughts of new bosses and raunchy rumors and pretty pugs.
Valentine reached up to pat Polly's shoulder as she moved past her, a finger on her opposite hand curling to tell her cohorts to come along. "Then I'll leave you all to it," she said, then strode away. Her soft paws were silent on the floor, but she was echoed by the click-clack of her valet's dress shoes and Olive's heels. As the pug passed Polly, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled softly again.
If Polly's heart wasn't thumping like a rabbit, she would've thought she was going to melt into a puddle.
Once the three were out of earshot, Polly heard one of the people around her start to chuckle.
"Wow," Patty said before she gave a wolf whistle. "I knew you had it bad for Underdog, but I didn't know it was this bad!"
The other reporters started laughing, and this time when Polly's face heated up, she knew it was with embarrassment—maybe indignation.
"Wha—!" she exclaimed, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.
"I think," Bruce said in his smooth, oily way, "She's getting it bad for that Olive chick."
Colleen kept giggling, "And OJ thought Daniel and I were too much!"
Polly slapped her hands over her face, so hot that, almost immediately, her palms became sweaty. "This is so unfair," she whimpered, "I don't even have my makeup on yet."
Her coworkers only laughed harder, and Polly couldn't blame them.