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| Episode 1: Team Claw in Saving the Power Plant |
| With
the start of another night, Nemo was anxious for the humans to fall
asleep. He stared stealthily at the life form next to him and batted
her face lightly with his paw, assuring himself that she was indeed
asleep. He slowly raised himself from his lying position and eased the
door open. Bounding down the stairs, he stopped by his little closet
near the top of the stair that had been installed with a matter
transporter. Grabbing the bag inside, he finished his path at the foot
of the stairs. "Tsuki, Yoru, front and center, Yesterday!" Tsuki was instantly out of the cage that housed them and in front of her commanding officer. "Yes Sir!" she replied as she saluted him. "Yoru, you too!" demanded Nemo, hesitant to start the process without both of them. Bringing up the rear of enthusiasm, Yoru stalked up and flopped down in front of him. Glaring at him, but tolerating his insubordinate behavior, Nemo started the briefing. "Headquarters called again, right in the middle of the day, so it is super important that we do this right, this time!" He casually glazed cooly over at Yoru, who seemed to have better things to do than look at him. "Anyway, HQ has demanded that both of you guard the Local Power Plant tonight, it seems that Viktor is on the loose again, and they have caught wind that he is targetting the Power Plant tonight. I want both of you to be on extra alert tonight, this is the first time that Viktor has gone after anything big." Nemo rummaged through the bag that had been transported for tonight's task, picked out the four sets of boots and handed them over. "I've heard that HQ came across about eight miles of velcro last week, so I think most of the missions for the next while are going to involve it, you'll need these boots to follow their trail, they have already staked out the power plant, all you two need to do is follow the trail for the length of the night and then meet me back here by five." Tsuki was the first to get her boots on, while Yoru lagged, Nemo was more than familiar with the two cats, like total opposites, but entirely unseparable, the circumstances that had brought them all together was indeed strange, but now wasn't the time for nostalgia, they had a mission to accomplish, and he was in charge of them, to make sure that they carried out the orders from HQ. This of course was a job in itself, but since fear had never been a concern, he enjoyed it. He escorted both cats to the matter transporter back up the stairs and pried open the door. In seconds they would be on their way and he would have to go to the control room to keep an eye on things, with them and around the premise. Viktor was rather inventive for a fox, always trying something new and surprising, he would probably not be foiled in his attempts at mischief so easily this time. Just before he pressed the Send button, Tsuki turned to ask a question. "Can I use the invisibility pack tonight, I always love being invisible, it is just so much fun!" Nemo sighed, but nodded his head, Tsuki always loved being invisible because she got to wear their only pair of heat goggles. Yoru was so slow anyway, it wasn't hard for him to not be noticed. Tossing Tsuki the pack, he pressed send to transport them to their location. Finished, he bounded back up the stairs. Taking a turn back into the main hall, he headed straight for the bathroom and the entrance to the control room. Confirming that no life form had stirred, he popped the bathroom door open and nosed himself into the cupboard. Looking straight back at the exposed bathroom behind this one, he sighed at the lack of protection, he remembered how hard it had been to move all the equipment and the control room itself before the main life form had discovered it while rebuilding. The new location between the floors of the house wasn't quite as roomy as before. As he manuevered himself through the wall to his right, he pressed his paw down against the bottom board by the floor and waited for it. It clicked and popped up revealing a massive amount of equipment and storage. Nemo dropped himself in and flipped the switch on the console of the main computer, as everything flashed into life, he commenced his checking. Pleased with the success of Tsuki and Yoru's arrival, he noted their position and checked the readings for any enemy locations. Grabbing his tail, he placed it in a slot near the bottom of the computer. He waited for the computer to reconfigure the communications unit installed in his tail and brought up the two cats own personal units. Finished, he inserted the ear piece and probed for Tsuki. Getting nothing, he tried again, and almost crying out in pain he slammed down the volume when her voice blasted through. With everything in place, Nemo settled down to wait, continually monitoring what he could. Picking up something strange on the screen, he told Tsuki to check it out and settled down to wait some more. As he was getting ready to readjust the computer for a wider range scan, Tsuki's excited voice burst into his ear. "He left a note Nemo! He says that the power plant will blow up in one hour, says he wants nobody to wake up tomorrow morning, so he is going to blow up the power plant because nobody uses non-electric alarm clocks anymore." Nemo rolled his eyes and locating a heat reading, he sent Tsuki to disarm the bomb while Yoru continued the patrol. Nemo grinned to himself a little, Viktor must be starting to get desparate if this was the only reason he was staking out the local power plant. Nemo poured over the screen again, noticing something he hadn't seen before, glancing at it again something suddently started to dawn on him. As everything started flashing, reality finally set in, this was serious! Nemo slammed down the resets, demanding more of a detailed response from the computer. There were more bombs, it had to be a trap! Nemo raced over his available options in his mind, he could either stay here and hope that Tsuki and Yoru could manage or he could go out to help them. As annoying as they were, he knew he just had to help them, Tsuki would do her absolute best but he couldn't help but wonder about the other one, Yoru. He hadn't performed very well in previous missions and those had been far from life-threatening. Suddenly deciding on his only real option he slammed the computer into auto. Looking around him his eyes fell on the glass case against the far wall, in it was his uniform that he had used during the accident. He grinned for a second, as he wouldn't need it this time, after all these were only bombs. Grabbing the bag HQ had sent for the night, he gathered the equipment that they would need and dropped them into the bag. Slipping through the exit, Nemo blasted out of the cupboard door, through the bathroom and out into the hall. He raced toward the stairs when the bag caught on a chair in the Kitchen. It clattered back down to the floor and Nemo froze. Several of the life forms stirred and it sounded like one was getting up. Nemo bolted for the transporter. This was not anything normal for the other two and he knew that he had to do something whether or not the humans noticed him and his noise or not. He descended down the stairs to the matter transporter and powered it up for another run. Glancing at the settings, he tweaked them to drop him off near the first patch of bombs. Remembering that he handn't told Tsuki or Yoru about the other bombs, he scolded himself for trying to be the super cat again and glanced at his com unit in his tail as the matter transporter loaded up the coordinates. Deciding to tell them on the other side, he jumped in and waited for the fuzzy warmness of being dissassembled and reassembled. Now on the other side, he shouted into his com unit. "I'm here, it was bigger than I had previously thought possible, I need you both here right now." He was impressed to see Yoru in front of him in less than fifteen seconds, which was remarkeable considering they were both upside down on one of the many strips of velcro that had been installed throughout the powerplant. He glanced around for Tsuki and was about to reach for his tail when a voice behind him called out. "I'm here, just a minute!" He turned to look and caught a glimpse of something moving really fast on the floor. He grinned, she was pretty good at maintaining her speed even when she was invisible, which was pretty good considering those heat goggles were a pain to use and the invisibility pack was a little heavy. The advantage to the pack wasn't complete invisibility in motion, but as he watched her faint reflection race up the wall towards them and come to a stop in front of them, she was completely invisible now at a complete stop. She appeared slowly as she powered down the pack. When she was done, he pulled out two scanning pads that he had grabbed from the control room and handed one to both of them. "We aren't in any great danger, but Viktor really seems to want to blow this place up. He is using about a hundred times more bombs than normal but like usual he hasn't rigged any of them to notice tampering. I want you to gather up all the bombs that you see on your pads and transfer them out of here using these." He pulled out two portable transporters from the bag and gave one to each of them. "Even if there are problems, I'm sure you can get them to transfer to sector Zero before they do any damage here." Nemo looked at the two cats, they both nodded in confirmation and they rushed off in their separate directions. Nemo was thankful that at least this once, Yoru had acted like this was important. Turning to his right, Nemo glanced at his pad and rushed over to the first stash of bombs and started pulling them off and gathering them up. He dumped them all in a main pile and set the portable trasnporter next to them. In seconds they were all gone and he moved on to the next stash. With only ten minutes to spare, Nemo rushed back to their meeting point and found Yoru already there with a pleased look on his face. Excellent, he had done well this time. He glanced around for Tsuki and looked quizzingly at Yoru. Yoru looked back in a manner suggesting that he knew what Nemo wanted, but he didn't know where she was. Nemo glanced down at his scanning pad to assure himself that they had all been transported out. Everything was done, but there was still no Tsuki. Thankful that the main part had been taken care of, he glanced back at Yoru. "Did she tell you where she was going?" Yoru nodded in affirmation and glanced to his left. "She was here about five minutes ago, but she told me that she had picked up something rather strange on her pad and wanted to check it out. Since she has the pack, I'm assuming she'll be all right." Nemo glanced around him again, Yoru was right, Tsuki was more than capable of taking care of herself. The Invisibility Pack made her even more lethal and definitely complemented her skills as an agent. Suddenly an excited voice whispered through his com unit. "Nemo, he's here, I saw him, I had to sneak away a little bit so that I could tell you without him hearing me, he seems to be doing something in a room near the back, I found him on my pad, but since I thought it might be a night guard I didn't bother checking until I had all the bombs done and had gone back to report. You didn't show up for a while so I thought I ought to check it out. He's working awfully fast and hard on something, I think you ought to check it out, I've set my pad in tracker mode, you should be able to find me, hurry!" Nemo responded that they were coming and nodded at Yoru to follow him. As they raced off towards the back of the power plant, her homing pad kept getting a little bit farther away. Finally catching up to where Tsuki should have been, they found the homing pad laying on a box right in front of a ventilation shaft. Looking around for a minute to see if she would show up, they both decided to follow the shaft, Nemo went first and Yoru followed as they stealthily raced up the shaft. Nemo spotted a glimmering light up ahead and they both approached it carefully, peering down into the room below where the light was coming from. Off in the corner was a familiar bushy tail and spiked hair cut. Viktor was rummaging around in a box, finding what he wanted he raced over to a little box like object, appearing to be adjusting something on it. Nemo looked closer, it couldn't possibly be, NO, HE WOULD NOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN! Yoru could barely get out of his way fast enough, Nemo was through the hole and down in the room, putting very little between him and Viktor in a very short amount of time. Viktor heard him in time to leap almost out of the way before the full force of the kick aimed at him could connect. The force of the kick sent Viktor reeling, but he caught himself in midair and landed on his feet in a defensive stance facing Nemo. Nemo glared at him, Viktor looked back, apparently pleased that Nemo had shown up. "Its about time you showed up, I see you already cleaned up all my bombs, pity really, so on to the main event." He motioned towards the box and it unfolded itself to reveal a rather menacing looking robot. Nemo looked at the robot in utter disbelief, and then looked back at Viktor, Nemo's face visibly relieved and smiling a little bit. "I can see that you will never be like your father." Viktor was visibly insulted by the comment. "You have far to much confidence in your skills Nemo, and I think I have the key to your doom!" He motioned towards the robot, and it twirled its arms in a supposed attempt at looking menacing. Nemo sneered and before Viktor knew what had happened the robot was in pieces. Nemo looked down at the wreckage and picked up the only piece left of the robot, a little chip from the control mechanism. Nemo glanced at the chip for a second and caught a glimpse of something off to his right. He smiled and looked at Viktor, holding up the chip. "This is the best you can do? Don't make me laugh!" Viktor wasn't used to being insulted so much by his enemy and had since had enough. He glared at Nemo and held up his hand. "This isn't over Nemo, I will be back, and you won't foil me next time!" Nemo reached around to his tail and pressed it down for a second, as Viktor's hand went down, a puff of smoke went up. Moments later the smoke cleared to reveal a rather bewildered Viktor, apparently astounded that he was still in the same place. He looked over at Nemo, and barely had a second to nearly get out of the way again before Nemo had his foot into him. Viktor flew into the air and caught himself the same as before, this time landing on a box near the back of the room. He pulled himself up and stared rather bewildered at Nemo for a second. Nemo glared back. "Thats something your father taught me, I hope you like it!" Nemo glanced off to his right again, now was the time to end it. "Tsuki, do it now!" Tsuki burst around behind Viktor and leapt up towards the top of the box with the restraining harness as the only thing visible. Viktor pulled around to notice the flying harness in time and jumped out of the way. He sneered at Nemo and bolted for the door. Yoru had already found that to be the easiest exit to guard and had since placed himself there, blocking his retreat. Viktor, suddenly aware of the triple-team, reached around for his tail, but Nemo was already on top of him, sending him sprawling across the room with another kick. Viktor picked himself up and looked around, not used to this kind of concerted effort and extreme rage by Nemo, he had had enough. He jumped for the chip that Nemo had discarded by the remains of the robot, scooped up some other items and jumped through the ventilation shaft that had since been left unguarded. Nemo saw Tsuki bolt for the other end of the room to catch him, but he called her back, apparently satisfied at what had been accomplished. Tsuki flipped out of invisibility and look at Nemo, almost astounded at everything that had happened in the last few minutes, Yoru also appeared quite astounded, they both looked at Nemo differently, almost with apprehension. Nemo, quite aware of the looks, walked over to a smaller box to sit down and collect his thoughts. He looked up at them when he was finished, quite ready to answer their questions that they were going to ask him. "Why did we let him go?" Tsuki said, "But that was so cool Nemo, you never did that in any of our other missions!" "You should have taught us how to do that, and when Viktor was reaching for his stun gun, you were so awesome!" added Yoru. "I'd have to admit that I am quite surprised myself," replied Nemo. "Something I saw triggered a memory that I wish to never experience again, but thankfully, it was not as I had thought, though I was unable to control my response towards Viktor fast enough to do it more reasonably." He glanced down at his scanning pad and grinned. "However, I think that HQ will find the information from Viktor's chip that I scanned to be most useful. As you both know, Viktor is a part of a much larger network of bandits the world over, if we were able to pentrate that network and find out who is supplying them, our overall efforts to rid us of them would be better." He glanced at his clock and then back at Tsuki and Yoru. "Almost five, I think its time we head back to rest up for tomorrow night's mission don't you think?" They all nodded in agreement as Nemo set a portable transporter to take them home. Yes, Nemo thought, rest is defintely what he needed, because next time, he wasn't going to let Viktor get away so easily. |
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