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Thunk! The moss-covered rock hit the chain once more. Murdoch, sweating, grunted and raised it over his head again. He was a big kat, muscles bulging through the prison-issue white shirt and plain brown pants he was wearing.
He and four other convicts had just gotten done escaping from an Enforcer substation located on the outskirts of the city, where they'd been awaiting transport and fled into the depths of Megakat Swamp. Thunk!! The rock came down, destroying the last of the chains linking him and his four cohorts together. Satisfied, he tossed the rock aside with a splash.
"Boys, we're a chain gang no longer," he said. "Now we're just a plain old gang. And I'm the leader. Any objections?"
There were none. His nickname during his frequent prison sentences was "Murderin' Murdoch." Nobody knew if he ever actually had killed anyone, but he looked tough enough that nobody really ever questioned him.
"Good, now come on!"
The five of them turned and trudged through the swamp. Although Murdoch was confident they were home free, his fellow prisoners were of the nervous, jumpy sort.
"Hey, Murd, how come we're in Megakat Swamp again?" asked one of the other cons.
"'Cause, genius, the Enforcers will never think to look for us this place!" Murdoch replied.
As they went on, the water they were wading through gradually got deeper and slimier. Something slithered down from a tree. It was a large snake with three glowing eyes. It opened its mouth and hissed at the convicts. Startled, one of them grabbed the three-eyed reptile by the neck and flung it away. Landing in the water with a splash, it swam off.
"This place ain't natural!" he said.
"Yeah, well, it's our ticket outta spendin' the rest of our nine lives in jail," Murdoch snapped. "So shut up and keep movin'!"
The further they proceeded the less leaves there were on the trees, and the larger, more deformed, gnarled and twisted they became. The escaped prisoners had found their way into the heart of the swamp, known to those who lived on its edges as "the Dead Forest." It was a polluted, sludgy, nearly lifeless area with huge trees rising up out of the fetid water like skyscrapers. They looked unhealthy, sick, dead yet somehow still living.
From the largest tree of all, one of the convicts saw what appeared to be a light shining through a kind of window. "Look! I see a light ahead!"
Murdoch squinted in the darkness. He saw it, too. "Someone's crazy enought to live here...?"
"What if it's, y'know... him?" asked another con, terrified.
The one who'd first spotted the light seemed scared, too. "Y-Yeah, Murd? What if it's D-D-Dr. Viper...?"
Murdoch became angry. "It ain't Dr. Viper! Everyone knows that freak lives in the sewers. Now come on."
He trudged on. As they passed by some of the smaller trees, each con broke off a large, thick branch to use as a cudgel. They finally arrived at the base of the tree, which Murdoch estimated to be at least twelve stories tall. Alongside it was a crude dock of sorts, onto which the five cons climbed.
"I don't see any entrance..." said the third convict.
Neither did Murdoch at first. Turning, he noticed a ladder hanging down and looked up. It went up to a large knot in the side of the tree serving as a natural balcony of sorts. He smirked.
"I think we found our mysterious swamp hermit host's front door, boys," Murdoch said.
"Now what?" asked the third con.
"Up, dummy," replied Murdoch, gesturing to the ladder with his cudgel.
He went up first. Lead by example, he liked to say. He was followed by three of the other four convicts, but the second convict, the one who'd been so creeped out by the three-eyed snake, lingered on the dock.
"Are you guys sure this is such a good idea?" he asked.
"If you're such a scaredy-kat, stay down there!" Murdoch called down.
He and the other three continued climbing.
The second con, sighing, scratched his head, growing more worried by the minute. "Be careful!" he called after them. "W-Watch out for possums and stuff!"
The knot had a knothole. A deep one. It served as a kind of tunnel into the rotted, hollowed-out interior of the tree, which was honeycombed with different rooms and chambers, most of which, it turned out, were empty. Brandishing their tree branch cudgels, Murdoch and his three companions proceeded deeper into the interior, following the source of the faint light they'd seen coming through the window.
As they passed the walls, enormous, thickly-veined eyes opened, turning to watch them go. But each time a one of them sensed they were being watched and turned, the eyes closed in time... only to reopen and continue staring at them as they headed off.
The group entered the main hollow of the tree, which seemed to serve as a living area. There was a ratty couch, two armchairs, and a crooked, ramshackle coffee table. Aside from this, the room was entirely given over to lab equipment of all things, with a huge worktable covered with flasks, beakers and retorts. Murdoch was baffled. His companions were becoming angry, impatient and scared.
"What is this place?" asked the third con.
"I dunno," Murdoch admitted, "but we'll steal whatever we can, then leave."
He heard the sound of movement. The four kats turned to see a figure lying on a cot across the room, its back to them. A blanket was pulled up over it. Murdoch smirked, his confidence returning. The owner, he thought.
"Must be the owner," he told his cohorts. "I'll go wake 'im up and ask if he's got anything worth takin'."
Another con grabbed his sleeve. Murdoch looked down at the hand grabbing him, then up at its owners face, which was deeply entrenched on the right cheek by a knife scar. He was annoyed at this challenge to his authority.
"Forget it!" whispered the scarred convict with hoarse fear. "I don't like this! Why bother? This guy ain't got nothin' we need! Let's just get outta here!"
"Relax," said Murdoch, jerking his arm free. He smacked his cudgel into the open palm of his hand. "This old swamp hermit ain't gonna give us any trouble."
Nearby, the other two convicts were examining the chemistry apparatus on the table, watching as the chemicals heated and bubbling over bunsen burners and flowed through spiralling glass tubes. It was beginning to dawn on them just where they were. Murdoch was wrong. Dr. Viper didn't live in the sewers...
"M-Murd," said the third con, "hey, listen..."
But Murdoch was already at the cot. He gave the sleeping figure a poke with his cudgel. It shifted a little. There was a buzzing noise.
"Wake up, you old weirdo!" he growled.
Upon getting no response, he reached down to grab him even as the con with the scar, wary, rushed forward in an effort to stop him, but it was too late; Murdoch grabbed the sleeping figure's shoulder and shook him. He started to demand to know whether he had any valuables or tools, when suddenly the kat in the cot rolled over to reveal a hideous sight. Murdoch gasped aloud and backed up as the figure rose from the cot.
He had brown fur and bulging compound green eyes like a fly. Two twitching antennae sprouted from his forehead. There were deep scars radiating out from the center of his face. He was clad in only the ragged remains of clothing, including a filthy lab coat with the sleeves ripped off, a threadbare dress shirt open to the waist and loose pants that looked far too large on his sticklick legs. Huge membranous wings buzzed and flapped behind him.
The creature that had once been MASA's Dr. Harley Street was most displeased at having his rest so rudely disturbed. So stunned was Murdoch by the half kat, half Ci-Kat-A's appearance that he just stood there as Street grabbed his arm and bit into it using his thick mandibles. Yelping, Murdoch dropped his makeshift cudgel and collapsed to the floor, writing in pain as a fire shot through him and burned its way into his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut.
The scarred convict lunged forward, swinging his tree branch like a baseball bat, but Street grabbed it, yanking it from the startled con's grasp. He snapped it in half, then grabbed its owner and bit him. Crying out as he, too experienced the agonizing pain, he fell down to writh painfully alongside Murdoch. Slowly, their twitching and thrashing stopped as they understood. They'd been chosen to serve a higher power. Opening their eyes to reveal they had become green and insectoid like Street's, they rose slowly from the floor almost robotically.
From across the room, the remaining cons dropped their branches and turned to run. Just then, a green, striped kat with spiky black hair and a loosefitting lab coat entered, carrying a kerosene lantern. A thick, snakelike tail lashed angrily behind him.
"What'sss all this ruckusss?" demanded an annoyed Dr. Viper.
At the sight of the intruders, he became enraged. His tail whipped around, hitting one of them. He was sent flying into the wall. Hitting it, he slid down into a dazed heap. The remaining convict whimpered in fear as the tail now slowly encircled him and squeezed him, lifting him up off of his feet.
"Intrudersss, eh...?" mused Viper, calmer now that he'd dispensed punishment and had the remaining would-be thief in his coils. "I know jussst what to do with the likes of you!"
Dr. Street walked over to the unconscious convict over by the wall, bending over him. He bit his shoulder. What was going on? wondered the con in Viper's grip. This was like some horrible nightmare. "Wh-What's happening?!"
"Nothing that need concern you," Dr. Viper said, hissing soothing, like a lover. "In a moment, I assure you you won't care one little bit."
Using his tail, he held the squirming convict out towards Street. Rising from his task, Street turned menacingly towards the last remaining normal kat, as his bitten victim rose, bug-eyed, stiff, like a zombie behind him.
"You're going to be jussst like your friendesss!" Viper hissed. "Isssn't that nice?" Turning to Dr. Street, he said, "Doctor, if you pleassse?"
"With pleasure, Doctor," replied the bug-eyed former MASA scientist, with a slight "buzz" to his voice.
He advanced towards the held-out convict who loosed a terrified scream.
Still waiting outside for his friends, the convict on the dock heard the scream and jumped. He turned to look up the ladder he'd last seen his companions ascend.
"Guys?" he called. "You okay up there?"
He heard a bubbling sound behind him and turned. There was a stirring amidst the murky swamp water. An enormous mushroom cap topped with feline ears broke the scummy surface and started towards the dock like a shark fin. There was a sudden eruption of water and a hideous roar, and the convict, holding his useless branch "weapon," had a brief impression of glowing red eyes and an enormous mouth rushing towards him, before everything went black. He felt himself slurped up and tumbled down into fleshy darkness, his scream abruptly cut off. A thick, wet belch issued forth from Dr. Viper's mushroom monster.
~*~
Burke and Murray Schlepper sat on the hood of a beat up old station wagon, which was parked facing a sort of thrown together obstacle course. The normally rugged dirt ground of the salvage yard had been smoothed into a path that snaked its way around various junk piles. At various points on this makeshift track there were enormous, age-pitted, weather-beaten concrete dividers and piles of dirt, some with ramps made from plywood boards, some without, and tunnels made using whatever happened to be at hand.
Burke reached into a cooler sitting next to him that contained more water than ice and grabbed a bottle of new grape-flavored Kitty Kola. Popping the cap using a fridge magnet bottle opener, he handed it to his brother. Murray took it and sipped it. Both brothers were wearing sleeveless tank tops and shorts due to the summer heat, which seemed to beat down on the salvage yard the hardest. Murray belched. Burke grabbed himself a bottle of soda from the cooler as Chance Furlong zoomed into view on rollerblades, followed by Jake Clawson right on his heels. The duo came literally flying into view, sailing through the air, having ramped off one of the plywood boards.
Chance slalomed around some strategically-placed obstacles consisting of random junk, giving a big yell. Behind him, Jake just as expertly navigated the obstacles. Both of them were stripped to the waist in the hot afternoon sun, and aside from sticker-covered rollerblading helmets, elbow and knee pads, the two were in naught but small shorts.
As they skated past them, Burke and Murray cheered them on, holding up their soda bottles. The mechanics' usual nemeses were observing their little race for lack of anything better to do on such a hot day, and after working alongside one another for so long, tensions between the four of them had cooled somewhat, in sharp contrast to the summer heat.
Murray was betting Chance would win. "Woo! Yeah! Chaaaaance!"
His brother had other ideas. "Go Jake! Go Jake!" yelled Burke.
Although sincere, their cheering was a little halfhearted. They were growing a little weary of the spectacle. The four of them had made plans to go to the park later that day, and the park had trees. And trees meant shade. The Schleppers were eager for their charges to hurry up and finish the race so they could get going. But Chance and Jake pushed ahead, as usual forcing themselves to their personal limits in an attempt to outdo one another.
"These new Turbo Rollerblades are radical, buddy!" said Chance, panting but still bristling with stamina, sweat pouring down his naked torso.
"Yeah," said Jake, also panting and sweating, but showing no signs of tiring, either, "they're gonna give me one more way to beat your tail!"
Chance glanced behind himself for a moment in disbelief. Did he hear correctly? He saw the shirtless Jake smirking as he gained on him, closing the distance. Unconcerned, he turned his head back around: gotta keep my eyes on where I'm going, he reminded himself.
"Dream on, buddy!"
They came up on a concrete divider laying across the track. He hunkered down. Behind him, so did Jake. He zoomed around some empty, rusty oil drums and as he reached the divider, his leg muscles strained and he launched himself through the air, sailing over the obstacle, graceful despite his bulk in comparison to Jake, who after swinging 'round the metal drums didn't need to squat so low to gain the height necessary to clear the divider; his leg muscles tensed and he shot into the air like a coiled spring. Still airborne, he flew towards Chance.
Watching from nearby, Murray took a gulp of his soda and elbowed Burke in the ribs, pointing. Burke was struggling to uncap his soda bottle using the bottle opener, but paused to look up, gasping. It seemed for an instant that Jake was going to hit Chance, but instead, the smaller, thinner kat grabbed Chance's shoulders and swung his legs up, effectively using his own momentum plus pushing down on Chance's shoulders to clear his opponent entirely, landing a few feet in front of him, now in the lead.
He grinned and gave a thumbs-up back to a surprised Chance. "I like this dream!"
Burke and Murray cheered. Burke pumped his arms, not realizing he was shaking his unopened soda bottle.
Chance and Jake ceme up to a tunnel made from a hollowed out 747 engine. Arms behind his back, graceful as a figure skater, Jake navigated the tunnel with his eyes closed, zooming around the cylinder, from the bottom, to the sides, over the ceiling, then down the other side without even trying.
Seeing this made Chance angry. He zoomed through the engine without any fancy stunts, too mad to show off. Besides, they were out of sight of Burke and Murray, so there was nobody to show off to.
"Crud," he grumbled to himself, "let's see what these things can really do!"
Each of the two had a small remote control device in their hand, and he pressed the button on his his. Miniature rocket boosters popped out of the sides of his rollerblades. They ignited, and with a burst of sudden speed, Chance rocketed forwards. He would've lost his helmet if it hadn't been strapped firmly to his head. Not that it didn't make a valiant attempt to free itself at the sudden, shocking speed at which its wearer was suddenly now traveling, the chinstrap stretching, helmet being tugged along behind. He shot past a startled Jake in a blue, trailing dust from his rollerblades... and smoke, Jake noticed with some alarm.
The rollerblades' wheels were spinning rapidly. Too rapidly. They were overheating and the friction, even against the dirt, was chiseling them down to little nubs. Chance's triumph turned to sudden worry as he wobbled uncontrollably.
"Chance, slow down!" Jake yelled after him.
"I caaaaaaaaaaaaaan't!" Chance screamed.
He 'rounded the corner of an obstacle, having gone the entire circuit, and actually sailed wildly out of control off of the track, trailing fire. He headed flailing towards the old station wagon where Burke and Murray were sitting. Murray yelped and jumped off. Burke had returned to struggling with the bottle opener, and didn't notice the incoming Chance, despite the screaming. His battle with the soda bottle had completely consumed him.
Reaching up, Murray grabbed his brother and yanked him off the hood, right as Chance was about to hit the front fender. However, he leaped up in an effort to clear the car, but didn't quite make it; his butt bounced off the hood, jostling the cooler. Propelled up by the impact, he sailed over the cooler - and the startled heads of the crouching Burke and Murray, and somersaulted through the air, to land feet first on the rough dirt, smashing both the wheels of his rollerblades and the little rocket thrusters.
No longer propelled by anything except his own momentum, Chance promptly fell to his knees and skidded along - kneepads preventing any injuries - before coming to something resembling a gentle stop banging against the closed passenger door of Burke and Murray's dump truck.
"Ow..." he moaned weakly.
Burke and Murray got to their feet, mouths agape.
Jake skated up and stopped beside them. "Chance!"
He skated over to his buddy as Chance slowly leaned over backward to lie on his back, knees bent, legs folded under him. Murray snickered as a wincing Burke, shaking his head, finally popped the cap on the soda bottle, and got blasted in the face by the shaken up carbonated beverage. Murray laughed at him, so Burke turned the deluge towards his shorter sibling, drenching him. Murray coughed and spluttered.
Ignoring them, Jake tends to Chance. "Chance, are you-"
He was cut off as suddenly Chance was up on his feet, the friction having completely annihilated the rollerblades - and his socks! - leaving him barefoot. And his soles were blazing red and smoking. "Yeeeooooooooowwwww!"
Hopping up and down like a man walking on hot coals, he struggled with the ruined remains of the rollerblades and finally got them off, then ran over towards the station wagon, each step an agony.
"Hot, hot, hot...!" he said, pained. He saw Burke's soda. "Cold, cold, cold...!"
Burke turned and aimed the last of the spritzing, fizzy cold drink at Chance's feet, but it quickly ran out, so Chance clambered onto the station wagon's hood and dunked both feet into the cooler - to much consternation from its owners. Ignoring Burke and Murray yelling at him, his eyes rolled back into his head in pure ecstasy and relief as smoke and steam rises up from inside the cooler.
"Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh..."
"Hey, that's ours!" complained Murray.
"Pipe down, I'll get you guys some more soda," Jake the great mediator placated him.
Grumbling and dripping in soda, the Schleppers turn and plodded off. They discussed the race. They seemed especially delighted at the way Chance crashed at the end.
Ignoring them, Chance turned and grinned at a scowling, disappointed-looking Jake, trying to save his dignity. "You gotta reinforce the wheels, buddy. I'm too fast for 'em."
Jake was agitated. "No, you're not. You just took another unnecessary risk. As usual. I told you before we started this race that the turbo boosters hadn't been properly tested. You could've gotten yourself really hurt."
"Aw, jeez, you're just sore that I won!"
Jake fumed. "By cheating!"
"Says the guy who swore up and down he really did eat that last mongo pepper."
"Then let's do another race later on at the park," growled Jake.
"Great idea!"
"But this time we're not using the rocket function on the new Turbo Rollerblades," Jake said, lifting a finger. Before Chance could protest, he quickly added, "I'm not letting you ruin another experimental pair of my Turbo Rollerblades and make a fool of yourself in public? This time it's gonna be a real race, without either of us having an unfair advantage!"
