Ni-hao! This continues from the story Prelude. This introduces Katra and
Lokii, two villainesses.
Enjoy!
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Swat Kats: The Series
A New Beginning
Later that night....around 1:30 am...
Gina wrapped her terry cloth robe around her a little tighter. She paced the
floor of her condominium nervously. Being on the top floor of a MegaKat city
high-rise, it gave her a grand view of the city which usually calmed her nerves
after a hard day at work. This time, it made her even more restless.
"Those SWAT Kats most have found something." Gina tried to close the split that
her robe had created on top of her left leg. "I bet that mangy T-Bone can’t wait
to show it off. I’d better prepare myself for war tomorrow. I have the
mid-morning shift." Gina walks over to the large pane of glass and starts to
close the curtains. "Well, time to call it a night," she thinks, closing the
final curtain.
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2:30 am....
"Haul tail Razor!" T-Bone calls behind his shoulder, climbing the fire escape of
Gina’s high-rise. The SWAT Kats, at T-Bone’s late night revelation, decided to
go over to Gina’s condo to give her the evidence. T-Bone wouldn’t say to Razor
how he found out Gina’s address, but Razor thought it would be best to kid him
about it later.
"T-Bone, what possessed you to come over here Gina’s other than get some measure
of revenge?" Razor gasps, taking the stairs two at a time. They had parked the
TurboKat a good distance away. "You know we have a backlog as tall as MegaKat
towers to do in the morning! And then any SWAT Kat duties..."
"Yeah, yeah." T-Bone mutters, finally reaching the roof top. "Finally!"
"O.K., wiseguy," Razor wheezes as he finally makes it the roof. "How do we give
the evidence to the Sergeant?....T-Bone?"
T-Bone had wandered to a vent and started to unscrew it. "This is how we get
in," he says.
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THUMP!
"Huh?" Gina sleepily rubs her eyes, stretches in her bed, and looks at the
clock. "What’s that noise at this ungodly hour?"
THUD! CRASH!
Gina leaps up out the bed, grabbing her gun and her robe in one fluid motion.
Gina quickly puts on her robe and presses herself to the wall. Hugging the wall
and keeping to the shadows, she makes her way to the living room. With one paw
firmly on the trigger of her gun, she flicks on the lights.
There, in all his splendor, was T-Bone, who had fallen through the vent in her
ceiling and had landed unceremoniously on her low table.
"T-Bone! You bastard!" Gina yells at him, now with two paws on the gun. "What
are you doing here?"
A few seconds later, Razor carefully lowers himself through the vent with his
glovatrix. "Uh, hi Sergeant."
"Wha..." Gina, now confused, backs up to a better vantage point.
"I know you’re wondering why we’re here." T-Bone picks himself up, brushing the
bits of wood of his g-suit. He notices Gina’s gun trained on him. "Can you put
away your gun?"
"Like hell I will," Gina spares no words. "Now tell me why you’re here."
For an answer, Razor pulled out the red-worded note he found and hands it to
her. Gina lowers her gun as she reads the note.
"Katra," Gina says after awhile. "She always writes in read nail polish."
"Nail polish?" T-Bone asks, surprised. "I thought it was paint."
Gina chips away some of the nail polish away with her own nail. She holds it up
for T-Bone to see. "Nail polish chips away easier than paint."
"A she-kat thing?" T-Bone smiles.
"You could say that," Gina responds, sheathing her nail, and putting the note in
a pocket of her robe. Something stirred inside Gina whenever she saw one of
T-Bone’s rare smiles. She didn’t like it.
Razor had begun to clean up the mess T-Bone had made. He stifled a yawn in the
process. Razor decided to let T-Bone handle the backlog when they got back.
"Thank you, Sir Knight!" Gina decided to torment T-Bone. She shifts her focus
back to T-Bone. "All right, big and burly, fix my vent!"
"After all we’ve done for you..." T-Bone protests, but begins to do it anyway.
"An upside down pilot." Gina cocks her head to the side, looking at him. "So you
have some use after all."
"It’s not that I’m complaining." T-Bone, after putting in the last screw, turns
his head around to look at her, and her body. "The ‘view’ here is great."
"You pervert!" Gina, slightly blushing, clutching her robe tightly with one free
paw. She’d just realized she wasn’t hardly wearing anything. "Get out! I have a
morning shift today and I need sleep."
"What? No thanks?" T-Bone pushes Razor in front of him to the door.
Gina follows them. "One last question," Gina says as they reach the door. "Why
didn’t you give this to Felina?"
"And miss that look on your face?" T-Bone chuckles as he closes her door. "No
way!"
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9:30 am
Chance breezes through the backlog of cars with ease. Fortunately, they had
minor problems. Jake was sleeping soundly in his room, after giving Chance the
3rd degree. Chance had gotten what he wanted: Revenge against Gina. But the look
on her face and her _body_ .... gave him sweet dreams earlier.
"You’re smiling like the Cheshire cat this morning." Jake rubs his eyes, coming
the room. "What’s on your mind?"
"Things." Chance says simply, wiping his paws with a rag. "I finished the
backlog. Turns out they had small problems."
Jake doesn’t answer right away; his head is in the refrigerator, looking for
cans of milk. "Luckily for you this time."
Jake tosses a can of milk to Chance.
"Want to take a ride?" Chance says after taking a gulp.
"Now? I just got up!" Jake yawns, then looks at Chance. "You like Gina don’t
you?"
"What makes you think that?"
"The way you kept looking at her early this morning, and how you wanted to go
over there and...Hey! How did you get her address?" Jake says after a long swig
of milk.
Chance doesn’t answer. Instead, he crumples the can and bounces it into a
basket. "I’m heading out. I’ll be back in a few."
"Hey! Wait for me!"
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10:30am... at Enforcer Headquarters....
Gina put on a sleeveless trench coat around her g-suit* on her way to the
Commander’s office.(*If you didn’t read the FAQ, it’s a short version of
T-Bone’s g-suit). In paw was the note The SWAT Kats had given her earlier,
encased in an evidence bag. She was still red-faced about the whole deal.
Gina knocks on the Commander’s door, waiting for an affirmative. When she gets
it, she opens the door.
Feral was sitting behind his desk, looking haggard and bleary eyed. He had a cup
of coffee on his desk and was looking through a file of some sort.
"Rough night, sir?" she asks.
He looks up from the file he was looking at. "Does it show that much, Sergeant?"
Gina nods.
Feral sits back in his chair, sighing. "I’ve been here since 6 o’clock looking
at what happened yesterday at Pumadyne. So far, none of the Enforcers I have
there haven’t been able to find anything."
"It may be because the SWAT Kats took the only salvageable evidence from the
scene," Gina says to him.
Feral looks at her.
Gina tosses the evidence bag on his desk. "The SWAT Kats dropped this by my
apartment in the a.m." Gina decides to spare the details on how early. "This
proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Katra is behind the Pumadyne fire. She
loves to brag and announce her crimes."
Feral was taking the nail-polished note out of the bag and was looking at it. "A
new criminal." He sighs.
"It looks like she wants to make allies here." Gina says, crossing her arms. "It
would be easier to establish a network."
"You said Commander Okto should know about her?"
Gina nods. "When I was a part of the Police Squad, we worked with Okto about
Katra. She may have hit Comdr. Moon, too."
Feral nods and looks her over. "You look like you’re about to go in the jet."
"Yeah, it clears my head. I’m still new to this city, you know, and I want to
look at some potential sites that Katra might hit."
Feral nods again. "If you find out anything else, let me and Felina know. I’m
probably be in helicopter, with Felina piloting, so you might see us.
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11:00 am....at an undisclosed location...
"Lokii, you’ve got to help me out!" Katra pleads. "Remember all those times we
tricked Commander Alisa MiFurr?"
Lokii looks up from her solo solitaire game, card poised in midair. She has a
devilish grin on her face. Lokii, the spirit of mischief, gathers the stack of
cards in her paws. She wears a jester’s garb, in the colors of blue and red.
"I need your help in distracting the law enforcement body from my crimes. I need
allies, and the sooner I show my power, the easier it will be to gain the black
market’s trust," Katra says, cringing inwardly. She hated groveling, but it was
the only way to get on the spirit’s good side.
Still smiling, Lokii now lays out the cards in the Celtic cross formation and
looks at them for awhile. "All right, I’ll help you. The cards say it’s a good
move. And besides, I need to talk to my friend Greymalkin, the kat-in-the-box."
"And now you owe me one.." Lokii says, disappearing in shower of confetti.
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"What is with you, T-Bone?" Razor shouts over the engines. "Why don’t you just
admit you like the Sergeant?"
The two was flying over MegaKat city. It was a routine flight, starting with a
circle around City Hall that branches out into larger circles. Razor, with
nothing to do but check radar, gives T-Bone a dose of his own medicine.
"Me? Like the Sergeant? Are you nuts!?" T-Bone calls behind him. "Sure, she’s
cute and all in her dresses but..."
"No wonder she called you a pervert," Razor groans.
"I heard that," T-Bone says, then changes the subject. It felt uncomfortable to
him. "You know, with that new criminal in the city and all, you would think
there would be more activity than this."
"It makes you think, doesn’t it?" Razor decides not to torment T-Bone anymore on
that subject.
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Gina flies over MegaKat city, still trying to familiarize herself with the city.
It has been almost been 6 months since she transferred, and her probation was
almost up. She was sure she would pass with flying colors.
Gina was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she failed to notice the warnings of
another aircraft in a direct proximity.
Finally, the alarms break through Gina’s thoughts and she sees the TurboKat
coming straight towards her!
"Whoa!" Gina breaks a hard right out of the path of the SWAT Kats.
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"Ha ha! She blinked!" T-Bone whooped it up in the cockpit.
Razor can only shake his head.
"What the hell do you think you’re doing, you jerk!" Gina shouts angrily into
her mike, knowing that the SWAT Kats would be on her frequency.
"Just proving that I’m the superior pilot," T-Bone gloats.
"We’ll just see about that, you bastard!" Gina says, firing up all her engines.
"Catch me if you can!"
The afterburners come to life as Gina whips her jet in front of the TurboKat,
almost clipping it.
"All right! Rock ‘n Roll!" T-Bone starts to accelerate.
"T-Bone-" Razor starts to protest, but they are barely heeded as T-Bone takes
off after the she-kat.
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"And so as mayor it gives me great pleasure to announce the... *YAWN*... new
alliance with the city of Minmei and with Mr. Young and his associates..."
Callie writes the speech down on her pad on her desk.
Manx was out of town this week and then goes on vacation the following one. His
absence caused Callie to think of these weeks as a mini-vacation. Also on her
desk was a letter from the neighboring city of Tokata. The mayor, Myna Persian,
wanted an alliance with MegaKat city. The deputy mayor said in the letter that
the mayor wanted to have more events, like the Dojo Championships, in MegaKat
City.
"When the mayor hears that, I’ll bet he’ll jump out of his fur," Callie thinks,
walking over to the window. The mayor wanted to be allies with Tokata for years.
The roar of engines makes Callie snap out of her thoughts. She sees the TurboKat
chasing Gina jet. Surprised, Callie runs back to her desk and rummages through
her purse for the little triangle communicator. Finding it, she presses the
button.
"SWAT Kats?" Callie questions, watching the special. "What’s going on?"
"Gina challenged T-Bone to a race, Ms. Briggs, and it turned into a dogfight."
Razor replies over the frequency. "Since Gina flies solo, T-Bone has to do his
own weapon locks. I’m here for the ride."
"What’s a dogfight?"
"The pilots try to get weapon locks on each other; the first to get it wins."
(Author’s note: My definition.)
"Good luck! Remember the Dojo Championships!" Callie signs off.
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"That she-kat is hard to lock on to." T-Bone says through clenched teeth, with a
paw on the throttle and another on the manual weapon controls. T-Bone had to
admit that Gina was good. She used all the techniques in the book, and some not
in the book. She was a wild pilot, causing T-Bone to wonder how she flew to get
her license.
Razor was quiet for 2 reasons. 1: It would distract T-Bone. 2: It wouldn’t be
fair to Gina. Even though he wished his partner the best, fair is fair. With
nothing really to do, Razor starts checking radar. It appeared that they were
getting closer to Enforcer airspace. Razor attempted to speak. "T-Bone..."
"Damn that she-kat!" T-Bone growled. He was oblivious to what Razor was saying,
he was concentrating so hard.
Razor sighs, giving up. It was pointless. He just hoped that T-Bone would
realize it in time...
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"Ready to go, Felina?" Feral stands outside Felina’s helicopter, waiting for his
niece to gear up. He wanted to get in one flight around the city before he had
lunch with his fellow Commanders. Right now, he was devising a way to get out
his blind date.
"Ready Uncle!" Felina steps into the pilot’s seat. Feral follows and straps
himself in.
"Control tower, this is Lt. Feral. Is the airspace clear?"
"Negative, Lt," Control Tower radios back. "It seems the Sergeant got herself
into a dogfight with the SWAT Kats."
Feral unbuckles himself and steps outside. He peers into the sky around
headquarters. "Felina, ask them where they are."
Felina nods and repeats the question to Control Tower. "They are to the south,
behind us."
Engines are heard as Gina’s jet comes into view, followed closely by the
TurboKat. To the untrained eye, it seemed like the SWAT Kats were chasing a
criminal.
"This is how Gina made her mark the first time," Feral recalls, looking at the
scene with interest. "She beat them in a dogfight and things haven’t been the
same since."
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Suddenly, Gina slams on the brakes of jet and dives downward, causing T-Bone to
fly over her at a high rate of speed. Gina climbs back up in line with the
TurboKat and quickly lock on.
"Gotcha!" Gina cries, powering down her jet and moving toward the airstrip.
"God Damn it!" T-Bone curses, slowing down the jet. He then realizes he was in
Enforcer airspace.
"Razor, don’t tell me that’s the Commander down there on the airstrip," T-Bone
sighs.
"Yeah," Razor acknowledged.
"So I’m going to have to do this in front of.."
"Yeah, and it’ll probably surprise the Commander, too."
Meanwhile, an ecstatic Gina hops out of her jet. Feral walks over to her.
"You can reprimand me later about the airspace violation , Commander. Right now,
I want to savor the moment." Gina peers over the wing to look at him.
Feral crosses his arms over his chest, slightly amused. This was the second time
Gina had done this, and when the deputy mayor hears about it...
A beep sounds in Gina’s cockpit, alerting her that someone was trying to hail
her. She jumps up into the cockpit and answers it. "Yes?..."
"I hate to admit this, Sergeant," T-Bone says over the frequency, finding the
words difficult to say, "but you beat me."
Gina is shocked. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her happiness fades
somewhat.
"Nice flying, Gigi." T-Bone calls her by one of her nicknames.
"Congratulations."
"Thank you.., and T-Bone," Gina murmurs, still shocked. "You’re a pretty good
flyer, too."
The TurboKat takes off to parts unknown. Gina, now subdued, blinks at the sight.
"What was that all about?" Felina had hopped out of her helicopter and had
joined her uncle.
"He...congratulated me." Gina answers, her voice small.
Feral was shocked. "Really?"
Gina nods. She walks away, the thrill of the win gone from her. "Perhaps, I
misjudged him..."
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Meanwhile, in the Enforcer evidence locker....
Smithy, radio on full blast, processing pieces of evidence at his leisure. He is
unaware of the lively conversation behind him in the bowels of the locker.
"That music that idiot is playing is driving me crazy!" Greymalkin shakes in
box, reliving his woes to his friend Lokii. "I desire to get out of here and
join back with Ringtail again...."
"Who’s Ringtail?" Lokii asks, shuffling a stack of cards.
"Ringtail is a raving lunatic, a kat I joined to become MadKat." Greymalkin
relieves his past in his mind’s eye. "What fun we had until those blasted Swat
Kats and the Commander stopped us!"
Lokii remembers her promise to Katra at the mention of the Commander. "Greymalkin,
where is this Ringtail?"
"Last I heard, he was put back into MegaKat Asylum," Greymalkin looks at Lokii.
"Why?"
"I made a promise to Katra that I’d get the law enforcement off her tail for
awhile. MadKat seems perfect to help me with that mission. What do you think?"
"Yes!" Greymalkin practically jumps up and down. "But let me talk to him. He
listened to me before, and he’ll listen to me again."
Lokii picks up the kat-in-the-box. "Welcome back, my friend...."