InsaneJournal

Dr. Viper's Girl (3/?)
Title: Dr. Viper's Girl (3/?)
Chapter Title: Exile
Rated: PG13
Pairing: none
Fandom: Swat Kats
Swat Kats belongs to Hanna Barbera and it's partners

-----

This story is an idea that's been bouncing around my head for about a decade. Warnings for a sanitized description of Stockholm Syndrome.

This story was written April 2010. It has been edited.

-----

Commander Feral held Steele by the throat, dangled him a foot in the air. He seriously contemplated holding the sniveling little weasel over the edge of the tarmac.

“I can have you declared incompetent,” Steele rasped.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Feral snarled.

“I’ve always wanted your job, Commander. Why wouldn’t I take the opportunity to snatch what I want?”

Feral put him down. He growled, ears back and fur raised. His claws kept unsheathing themselves. “Capture her,” he ordered loudly. “Unharmed.”

“Yes, sir,” came the responses.

The SWAT Kats scampered up to Commander Feral. “What can we do?” Razor asked.

“Stay out of the way,” Feral ordered. His ears pricked and eyes widened at the sound of gunshots.

“Got her, Sir,” some sergeant proudly exclaimed.

Feral didn’t care about how unprofessional it might look or how much Steele was smirking in the shadows. He ran to that sergeant and grabbed him around the throat. “What part of ‘unharmed’ did you not understand?” he growled, ever so softly.

The sergeant’s ears flattened and his tail tucked between his legs. “It was a tranquilizer, sir,” he whimpered. “All we have to do is see where she lands.”

“You idiot!” Feral shouted. “Flying things don’t land when they’ve been tranqued, they fall!” He pointed to the lot of pilots on deck. “Get a chopper on her! Follow her! If she passes out before landing get a net on her! Bring her back unharmed!”

“Yes, Sir!”

Feral turned back to his sergeant. “If she dies…” he warned, leaving it at that.

-----

I came to lying on my belly in the mud. My head was pillowed on my arms on what felt like the bank of a pond and the rest of me was largely submerged. My wings were unfolded and laying comfortably on top of the mud. I pulled myself out and made an attempt at cleaning my fur.

I had a pounding headache. It must have been the tranquilizers. Or maybe just the whole night’s events were catching up to me.

The sun was near noon. It was still morning. I guessed I was only out for a few hours, any longer and the Enforcers would have found me. It wasn’t like I’d hid where I was going.

Sunlight filtered through the trees onto ponds dotted across the landscape. Soft areas of mud and moss left only a few hillocks of dry land. Birds called all around me and I heard small animals scampering in the undergrowth.

I gave up trying to clean my fur when I heard something larger than a small animal off in the distance. It was coming my way. I trotted off, looking for somewhere to hide.

Hillocks and ponds gave way to mud and water and I found myself slogging through first knee deep then waist deep then chest deep water and mud. I ducked down into the water and hid myself among the roots of a mangrove tree to listen.

“Your career is at stake, Commander,” said a voice I knew. Razor. The SWAT Kats were here?

“I know that, SWAT Kat,” another voice snarled. “You’ve mentioned it six times already.” My uncle. He and the SWAT Kats were looking for me?

“I can’t smell her anymore,” said a third voice. T-Bone. Damn it, he must have kept an enhanced sense of smell from his mutation. “She must have gone too deep into the water for me to track.”

“What’s out there?” Razor asked.

“Rumors of a hermit,” my uncle said. “Lots of quicksand. The ocean, eventually. Mangrove trees, wild animals, generic wilderness. At least that was with the last survey.”

“The Enforcers do surveys of MegaKat Swamp?” Razor asked.

“Every few years. It helps to know the layout just in case we have to do another kat-hunt in here.”

I heard their voices growing closer, their footsteps becoming less coherent as the water got deeper under them. I was so focused on trying to guess where they were that I didn’t hear the hissing until it was in my ear. I squeaked and grabbed at the snake, tossing it away from me.

“Over there!”

Damn. I came out of my hiding place, looked back, and tried to run off. Have you ever tried to run in chest deep water? I got only a few steps before falling. I floundered, got my feet again, and felt arms around my waist tripping me again. I went down, the weight of my attacker holding me down then dragging me back up. I breached the surface to find myself in my uncle’s arms. He looked me over, seemed to be searching for something with his eyes, before crushing me to his chest in a tight hug.

“Felina…” he murmured. He was purring. I think he was crying.

I petted him, scratched him behind the ears. I held him and purred, tried to tell him it was all right.

“Felina, you’re alive… I’m so sorry, Felina…”

“I’m okay, Uncle,” I said. “I’m alive. I’m not hurt. I’m here.”

“I was so scared… Steele went over my head, I couldn’t stop him… I… I don’t know if you can come back…”

“I’m not letting them study me, Uncle,” I said.

“I could…” said T-Bone, voice cracking. I’d forgotten they were listening. He cleared his throat. “I could let them research me.”

“T-Bone, no…” whispered Razor.

“No you’re not,” I said. Uncle let go just enough that I could turn to face this self-sacrificing SWAT Kat without him having to let go of me. “Neither of us is going to be studied against our wills. Neither of us has to get treatment if we don’t want it.”

“An overly idealistic viewpoint,” Razor said.

“It’s not idealism, I’m being selfish,” I admitted. “I read Conway’s resume before Uncle hired him. He’s a seething ball of ambition. Whoever gets ‘researched’ isn’t coming out of there alive. MegaKat City needs you, T-Bone, more than it needs me. I just… I don’t want to die.”

“I shouldn’t have hired him,” Uncle whispered.

“You had to, Uncle. With Dr. Zyme missing we needed someone on the Enforcers’ payroll in case of an emergency like tonight’s. What if you hadn’t hired him? Dr. Viper would have Katzilla-ed the city and we’d all be mutants.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe I’ll go to Bangkat or Katmandu or Los Gatos, somewhere where I can disappear. Maybe I’ll come back someday.”

“I hope you do,” Uncle said, squeezing me again. He must have come to a decision because he addressed the SWAT Kats. “You two hot shots should go,” he said. “Radio Enforcer Headquarters and tell them to come look for me. I-I’d like some time to say goodbye. Alone.”

The SWAT Kats each saluted me and slogged off towards land. Once I couldn’t hear them anymore I tugged gently on Uncle’s paw. “We’ll sink in quicksand if we stay out here,” I pointed out. Already the water had been creeping up his chest to his armpits.

“I honestly don’t think I care,” Uncle said.

“Uncle!” I scolded. I started trying to drag him to the moss and hillocks of solid land. He let me and we found a mossy area above the water level. He pulled me onto him to lay on his chest so I wouldn’t have to try and fold my wings awkwardly to lie on them. Surprisingly I felt his fingers running up and down the leading edge of my wing.

“You were the only one who even tried to understand me,” I whispered. “All growing up you were the only one who tried. Please try to understand now. Flying… it’s all I ever wanted. It’s all I’ve always wanted. You remember the little kitten who wanted to grow up to be a bird. I guess I got what I wanted, in a way.”

“I remember,” Uncle said. I could feel his chuckle rather than hear it. “When you were little you’d run around outside flapping your arms trying to fly.”

“You weren’t there when I started climbing trees,” I reminisced. “I jumped out, thinking if I could just jump from high enough I could fly.”

“That was when you broke your wrist, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I learned after that that I wasn’t going to be able to wish myself into the air. It’s why I joined the Enforcers. Finally I’d be able to fly. It was enough, or so I thought.”

Uncle pet me behind my ears. I nuzzled his chest and purred. “It can never be enough again, can it?” he realized.

“No… If it hadn’t happened I’d stay and never know what I was missing but, Uncle, I can’t… I think if I had to give it up I’d die.”

“Shhh…” Uncle kept petting me. Tears fell from my eyes as I kept nuzzling him. I didn’t want to leave, I couldn’t stay, we couldn’t stay like this, I never wanted to leave. It was with these terrible thoughts that I heard him ask me to stay. I couldn’t answer him.

The stress of the night before caught up with us. I guess my sleep with the tranquilizer didn’t allow the rest I needed to recover from it all. The next thing I remember was a soft hissing in the distance, coming closer.

“ssssSSSSssssss…”

I knew that voice. I’d heard it the previous night. It wasn’t a kat, it was something different…

“Damned sssssswat katssssssss…”

“Dr. Viper,” I murmured.

Yellow lantern-like eyes turned in my direction and Dr. Viper slithered towards me. He looked terrible. He’d bore the brunt of the explosion that aerosolized Katalyst X63 and so his augmentations were gone. Still, he bore openly the wounds of that night’s battle. He crawled along the ground, dragging one leg behind him as though it were broken; his massive tail propelled him forward. His hands were burned and scabbing, it must have been agony for him to have come as far as he did. He bared his teeth at my voice but his expression turned carefully neutral at the augmentations I still bore.

“The younger Feral,” Viper murmured. “Exxxpelled from your presssiousss sssity asss firmly asss I?”

I gently lifted my uncle’s paw from my shoulders. I heard him groan in his sleep. I didn’t know if I wanted him to wake up or stay asleep. “I left,” I admitted.

“Really?” Viper asked, surprised. “And why isss he here?” He pointed at my uncle with a sneer.

“He followed me to say goodbye. The Enforcers will be here soon to pick him up. I can’t stay here. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Viper agreed. He slithered closer, it was painful to watch. “If they found you who knowsss what they’d do to you.”

“I know what they’d do,” I admitted. “Dr. Conway wants to experiment on me before he agrees to unmutate me.”

“And are you leaving becaussse of the experimentsss?”

“Not just that,” I whispered.

“Interesssting…”

“I’m leaving Megakat City of my own accord. I refuse to let them take this away from me. No matter where I have to go, I plan on keeping this.”

Viper looked surprised. “You do not want to be cured?”

My words surprised him. My words surprised myself. “I am cured,” I said. “You cured me when you made me like this. And now they want to take it away.”

I heard a noise in the distance. It was unimportant next to the calculating look Viper gave me.

“I can help you, it ssseemsss,” he said. “Come with me, Feral. I can make sure no kat ever takesss thisss away from you.”

Noises in the distance changed to voices. The Enforcers were in earshot. I had no time to decide. I blurted the first thing I could think of. “Yes.” With that I got to my feet, lifted Dr. Viper in my arms, and carried him to the water. I heard shouts as we submerged and he led me off under the surface.

I had to stop, I couldn’t leave like this, Enforcers be damned. I pulled Viper up under the roots of a mangrove, up where they wouldn’t be able to see us. I watched them pull my groggy Uncle to his feet. Fear shot through me as kats started into the water, claiming they’d seen me, insisting they look for me.

Uncle scanned the swamp, seemed to stop and stare right at me. And called his men back.

“But, Sir…” I heard them protest.

“Let her go,” he said. “We don’t have the right to stop her.”

“But, Sir, Dr. Viper was with her, I saw--”

“So did I,” Uncle said, still staring at me. “It was just a snake. Your eyes play tricks on you, sergeant. Let’s go. That’s an order.” He smiled and nodded the very slightest before turning and leading the Enforcers away.

Fear and pride combined into awe as I realized he’d been awake the whole time. He’d heard everything. I nodded at Viper and we submerged again, swimming our way deep in the swamp.

Dr. Viper made his lair at the edge of the mangrove forest where the swamp faded into the ocean. What was once the corpse of a giant mangrove tree had been transformed by controlled growth and the occasional patch of carpentry. Interestingly the additions kept to the shape and feel of the great dead tree. I had the feeling as the tree rotted it would slowly be replaced bit by bit by walls and formations of Viper’s own hand. A tree but no longer a tree.

A melancholy mood doesn’t suit me. I apologize.

Because of his injuries I let Viper cling to me as I climbed the vine ladder to the entry. I wondered if it would be easier to fly.

“Dr. Viper? Are you… Oh…” I heard the soft-spoken voice before I saw it. A pale pot-bellied tomkat wearing little more than rags and a labcoat looked suddenly terrified at my appearance.

“I’m here, Zzzyme,” Viper hissed. He nudged my sides like I was some sort of horse. I finished the climb regardless.

“Dr. Viper, you’re injured!” exclaimed the wretched kat, rushing to Viper’s side. Viper let this Zyme help him to a shelf grown into the fungus wall.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, mostly to myself. I took the opportunity to study this strange kat. His fur and tail were very pale, his hands very quick. He looked like he’d been well fed in the past but maybe not so much now. Most surprising to me, he seemed to be completely unaugmentated. He was just a kat, so far as I could tell.

“Bring me boiled water, clean towelsss, the medicinesss, and a sssplint,” Viper ordered. Zyme ran off to comply, returning as quickly as he’d left. I guessed he’d expected this.

“Anything I can do?” I asked, feeling useless.

“My knee needsss to be popped back in and my burnsss cleaned before they get infected,” Viper said. “Zzzyme, you work on my handsss. Feral, if you wouldn’t mind?”

I knelt down and grasped his leg. “On three, then,” I warned.

“Wait! Zzzyme, thisss isss Feral,” Viper hissed. “She wasss changed during my plot and hasss acsssepted my gift. Make her comfortable onssse you’ve finished treating me.”

“Yes, Dr. Viper,” Zyme said. The humble, accepting way he said it made my fur stand up.

“One… Two…” At two I pulled Viper’s leg out and reset it. He howled and passed out.

Zyme took the opportunity to wipe Viper’s hands of dead flesh and muck before donning rubber gloves and rubbing a faintly green salve over the burns. He wrapped the ruined hands in a towel and laid them on Viper’s chest. Finally he turned to me. “Hello, Feral,” he said. “You’ve certainly changed.”

I shifted my wings. “Yes, I admit I have.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d mutate into a female, Commander.”

Commander? It took me a minute to realize that he thought I was my uncle. I burst out laughing. The day caught up with me and I found myself on the floor in hysterics, Zyme calmly waiting for me to finish. I finally got ahold of myself. “No, no,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes. “Commander Feral is my uncle. I’m his niece.”

“Oh, well then I should introduce myself properly,” Zyme said, not even fazed by his slip-up. “I’m Dr. Zyme, formerly of Megakat Biochemical. I worked for your uncle on a few cases.”

“I’m Felina Feral, probably a former lieutenant of the Enforcers at this point,” I said. “I heard of you, rumor has it you disappeared months ago. What happened to you?”

“I was taken from my life there,” Zyme admitted.

“You were kidnapped?” I asked. My fur raised. He must have noticed.

“No! No,” he said quickly. “Well, yes, technically. Permit me to explain while I groom your fur? Dr. Viper did ask me to take care of you.”

“Sounded more like an order.”

“Oh, he doesn’t have to order me around anymore,” Zyme said proudly. “I’ve learned. Come on, this way.” He led me up a ladder into a semi-private alcove lined with soft moss. I sat where he’d indicated and eyed him warily while he began brushing my fur.

“I love doing this,” Zyme murmured. “Dr. Viper doesn’t have any fur and I miss grooming someone so much…”

“So what happened to you?” I asked.

“Well… Do you remember the first attempt at a MegaKat Tower? Dr. Viper took it to build a staging area for a plantimal invasion of the city. The SWAT Kats interfered, of course, but they’ll never catch Dr. Viper. Inconvenience him, sure. Damage him, yes. Kill him, a future possibility. But catch him, no. Anyway, I was called in to aid the Enforcers in dealing with the remaining plantimals and studying them to find out what Dr. Viper was doing and how. The Enforcers wanted to find a less destructive way of dealing with his creations in the future. Unfortunately, Dr. Viper had still been in the building when the liquid nitrogen was dumped through the ventilation system. The nitrogen only worked because those plantimals were susceptible to cold, he survived by climbing onto a desk and waiting for the coolant to evaporate. That’s where I found him.

“‘Hello, Zzzyme,’ he’d said. It was all the warning I got before he was on me.

“Most of the pipes had burst during the initial freeze. The sewage line was particularly horrible. That was where he took me. He held me hostage there for hours, until the night shift. I vividly remember it, being cocooned in Dr. Viper’s tail, his hand covering my mouth so I couldn’t scream, his voice hissing in my ear, being able to see and hear every word and footstep and Enforcer just beyond the grate.

“He talked to me while he held me there. He told me how my Enforcer escort had left me, enabling him to capture me. He told me how they weren’t looking for me. He told me how they’d never miss me, how I didn’t matter to them. He was right, too. I could hear them just beyond the grate, just over my head. They weren’t looking for me. They hadn’t even punished my escort. They didn’t even care that all the evidence pointed toward a struggle and my being dragged away. I heard it all, from their own mouths. And finally, they left. They all left.

“And then Dr. Viper forgave me.” Zyme wiped a tear from his eye before returning to his absent grooming of my fur. “He said he forgave me for the part I played in making him like this. He-- he missed working with me, like we’d done before… when he was still Elrod Purvis. He said I’d be able to develop ideas I’d never even dreamed of, that I’d be able to help katkind in a way the city would never have allowed me. And he was right. Even if the Viper mutagen had worked, even if it had been perfect, even if I had been able to give it to the city like I’d planned they’d have done exactly what Purvis tried to do: sell it to the highest bidder. I’d have found myself in a world where my one beautiful contribution to katkind, intended to end world hunger, stop disease, restore blighted wasteland, would instead be used for breast augmentation and tail-lengthening in the rich. For making the rich richer, the fat fatter, all while the world around them withered and died in destruction and despair. And then he took me with him.”

My heart was breaking as I listened to Zyme’s words. I barely felt the brush as he expertly combed my fur free of the dirt, mud, water, and detritus of the swamp. I was so focused on his story I barely notice as he brushed out my arms, back, neck, hair, then started removing my clothing so he could do the rest of me. I let him groom me. At that point I would have let him do anything within reason, just to give him hope that there existed a life outside of serving Dr. Viper. I knew Zyme’s reaction. I’d read about it but I’d never seen it in the flesh before.

Stockholm syndrome. Dr. Viper had convinced Zyme that the world outside was a terrible place. Admittedly with my recent experiences I couldn’t honestly say otherwise but I very much wanted to.

“Don’t be sad for me, Felina,” Zyme said. “I enjoy my work here. And he doesn’t mistreat me. I know you won’t believe me at first but you’ll see. He’s never mistreated me. He’s never had to.”

I couldn’t help myself. “How did he break you?” I whispered.

“He didn’t,” Zyme answered. “I was already broken. I’d watched him die, Felina. I watched our Viper serum kill him. I created him. That knowledge broke me long before he took me. You have no idea how happy I felt the moment he said he forgave me.”

He finished his task by brushing the fur on the top of my feet. He put the brush down, got behind me, and asked if he may. I nodded, figuring he wanted to touch my wings. I didn’t react when I felt his hands on my shoulders nor when they ran down the leading edge of my wings. I did look back at him in confusion when he asked me to lay on my belly.

That’s how Dr. Viper found us, Zyme straddling my tail, massaging the tension out of muscles I swore I hadn’t even had the day before. Viper hissed and held out his hand, a hand I was surprised to see largely healed. Zyme scampered over to Viper and kneeled at his feet, eyes filled with adoration.

The scene should have disgusted me, knowing what I knew about Stockholm Syndrome. It should have sent me hightailing it back to MegaKat City right that moment. It didn’t. After Zyme’s speech it instead seemed somewhat natural. The look of affection Viper held for the kat at his feet certainly didn’t fit in with any prisoner’s nightmare I’d ever heard.

I sat up, only then realized my muddy clothes were nowhere to be found. I covered my nakedness with one wing.

“I’m guesssssing Zzzyme ssspoke to you while I recovered?” Dr. Viper asked.

“He did,” I said. I wondered why my voice sounded so small.

“I can explain thingsss to you if you like.”

“I might like that.”

“Come down with me to the lab. I will explain thingsss.”

Zyme stayed where he was as Viper slithered down the ladder. Zyme just nodded encouragingly at me.

I followed, watched Viper crawl up a second ladder, and impulsively jumped. There was enough room in the lab for me to flap quickly to the ledge he climbed to.

“Oh, most impressive!” I heard Zyme exclaim with the soft clapping of applause.

Viper gestured for me to follow him. We ended up on a balcony of sorts with a view of the ocean. The lights of MegaKat City shone along the coast. I could see tiny dots of light circling the center; they were all I could see of the Enforcers from this distance. “It’s beautiful up here,” I remarked.

Viper hissed but did not comment.

I curled my knees up to my chest and gazed out at the sky. It amazed me, how only a few tens of miles outside of the city center the stars shone that much brighter. Or maybe I was just seeing them better.

“You may come up here whenever you wish,” Viper said. “You may take off and land from thisss platform only if you agree to fly low. We cannot afford to have the Enforsssersss know our location.”

My heart clenched at his words. They were true but that didn’t make them any easier to hear. Suddenly I couldn’t look at the city.

Viper wrapped his tail around my waist. It was an awkward embrace but I took it all the same. “I confessss I will not be ssstopping my attemptsss at taking over MegaKat Sssity jussst becaussse you are here,” he warned.

“I assume you made Dr. Zyme the same promise?” I asked.

“I did. He wasss, asss he ssso put it, already broken when I brought him here. He’d broken himssself long before. He isss now my accomplissse and my friend, asss well asss whatever he ssso choosssesss to consssider himssself.”

“I don’t know if I can ever do that,” I admitted. “Helping you, I mean. It goes against everything I’ve ever known.”

“It wasss Zzzyme who possstulated that Katalyssst X63 might caussse mutationsss in katsss,” Viper continued. “That wasss why I usssed it inssstead of sssome other chemical. Katalyssst 99 worked better in animal experimentsss but in katsss it resssultsss in deathsss rather than mutationsss.”

I sat silent, absorbing what I’d heard.

“I’d rather not be alone if it can be helped. It isss the reactionsss of katsss that makesss me do the thingsss I do. If I mussst dessstroy them all to find peassse I will. If I can make them into beingsss like me, then I can rejoin sssosssiety asss more than a monssster.” He looked at his hands, still raw and burned, adorned with giant black claws. “Thessse are not the handsss of a sssientissst. Zzzyme isss happy to be my handsss but he isss asss alone asss I. You give me hope, young Feral. You left your presssiousss sssity rather than give up what I had given you.”

“I think I understand,” I murmured. I let myself look at the lights of MegaKat City. “I already miss it. I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss the buildings and the people. But I can’t go back. As soon as I do I’ll lose these and maybe more than that. More than I’ve lost by leaving.”

“You underssstand why I hate it all.”

I didn’t answer. Not with words, at least. I answered with the tears I felt sliding down my cheeks.

“Allow me to give advissse. Never allow yourssself to be jealousss of them. They do not dessserve it. They should be jealousss of you. You have transssended them. The few who can bring themssselvesss to join usss will in time.”

I tuned out what was probably a glorious speech about how mutants would rule the world. I resolved never to help him with his evil plans. I would never become an accessory to a villain of his or any caliber.

I knew it would break my uncle’s heart.

End Chapter 3