Chapter 11: Soft kitty, Warm kitty, Little Ball of Fur
(Or Mean Kitty, Angry Kitty, Little Ball of Claws.)
The docks were a dreary place, shrouded in fog and smelling of decaying fish and seabird feces — but receiving the imported cargo was impossible without it so the workers put up with the stench, letting their hunger motivate them to do the job.
Another crate was lifted out of the ship and placed in the dock’s loading area, it was opened and the overseer was pleased to see the contents were alive and well.
Chrysalis, the queen of the Changelings smiled as she adjusted the Stetson she was wearing. The crates that came in contained only the highest quality kittens, the little fur-balls more than happy to purr and spread love around the hive — everything was going to plan, and the hive would be well-fed thanks to its ingenuity.
Just then, one of the last crates that was being hoisted out of the ship fell to the dock, splitting open and yielding a blood-curdling howl; the drones stopped in surprise at the unexpected, and frankly disturbing, noises coming from the crate — it was enough of a pause to allow the cat inside to slice at one of the nearby drones with her sharp claws — the breeding female inside the crate’s remains was obviously mortally wounded, and she intended to take all those around her with her.
There was a moment of silence followed by the pandemonium of changelings talking: observing how the drone was hurt, laughing at his misfortune, or observing how thankful they were that it hadn’t been them as the cat licked its claws clean… and then the cat swiped at another drone, having gotten the taste of changeling blood.
“Shoot her!” Chrysalis yelled over the pandemonium, trying to control the danger that had been released, “Shoot her!”
* * *
“Why do I have to wear a bear suit?” Nicolas Cage asked, still unsure about how he’d allowed himself to be talked into it for the “costumed carnivore’s kitten card-game” (or costume-and-kitten-poker, if you wanted to use its colloquial name).
“Wicker Man.” Spike replied, his face sticking out of the mouth of his shark suit.
Nick sighed, “Well, at least there’s no bees… everybody wants the stupid bees for some reason, it’s old.”
Spike glanced up from his cards, and seeing Edward the bear with his clay honey-pot raised suspiciously behind Mr. Cage and motioned the bear back, terminating the bear’s mission of bee-delivery.
“Growf.” (Oh bother.) the bear muttered, disappointed. He pulled his tiger-striped shirt a little lower, it haven ridden up as he walked around. (Hey, you try finding a costume for a bear!)
Rainbow Dash, however, saw the whole thing and snickered into her hoof.
“And why is she in a costume of me?” Nick asked, indicating Rainbow Dash’s Nicolas Cage costume.
“It’s the only costume I had… and I wasn’t about to wear that one of me, those eyes are creepy!” Rainbow Dash said, explaining away why she didn’t want to wear the other costume… even though the slight blush she acquired told Spike that she was remembering the last time she wore the Cage costume.
“Um, e-excuse me… but I’ll raise.” Fluttershy said, then hid behind the multicolored mane of the Rainbow Dash costume she had borrowed from Mr. Cage.
“Why are you even here!?” Spike asked, incredulous at the shy pegasus’s presence. “You’re not a carnivore.”
“W-well, once, when I was f-feeding the baby birds… I swallowed part of the worm.” Fluttershy explained then, seeing everyone’s attention directed toward her, tried to hide in the costume’s multi-spectral mane.
“Yeah, Fluttershy’s cool. Even if she wasn’t, it is her place.” Rainbow Dash said, indicating the interior of Fluttershy’s cottage, “Besides, it’s not like we can use the Forest with the meat-weasels still on the loose.”
“But we’ve got bloody Nick Cage!” Spike said, indicating the human.
“Yeah, we beat them off once… we didn’t kill them.” Rainbow Dash said, pushing a kitten into the pot, “Anyway, I’ll see that raise.”
“My life is really weird.” Nicolas Cage said, shaking his head and sighing, flopping his cards on the table and scrubbing his face with his hands he announced his fold, “I’m out.”
* * *
She still remembered that fateful day when the plan had its inception. It all started with a little box on the side of the road with the innocuous ‘Free Li Hua Kittens to Good Home’ written on the side.
~~ Start Flashback-Memory Time! ~~
When she had looked inside there was a single kitten, so fluffy and cute! —and then when it let out the cutest little ‘mew’ her heart melted like butter left too close to the toaster— How could she leave it there alone?
So she took it with her to the hive where she found the most remarkable thing: when the kitten began to purr, it sent delicious waves of love! She had finally found a solution to the hive’s hunger issues!
Armed with this new information she called for her Grand Vizier, a changeling named Steve, and instructed him to import more of these “Li Hua” kittens for the hive. (It was important that they be Li Hua kittens in order to cut out as many variables as possible — after all, how likely was it that a Bengal would produce love like a Li Hua did?)
A week later he returned with news that they would only be able to get a few kittens… the Chinese were apparently bound by a treaty with the Gryphon empire giving them the sole right to Li Hua kittens — and so they could only get them through that empire, which had seen an up-tick in demand recently.
“I see. We shall either have to eliminate this ‘excess demand’, or capture the Chinese kitten-mines ourselves.” Chrysalis said, rubbing her perforated hooves together.
“Um, kittens don’t come from mines.” Steve said.
“Of course they do!” Chrysalis objected, “Just like any mineral kittens come from deep within the cold heart of the Earth!”
“Kittens are an animal, not a mineral.” Steve said, sighing.
“Are you sure?” Chrysalis asked, not quite believing, “I was certain they came from the ground… maybe like a carrot?”
“Those are vegetables.” Steve said drily.
“So you’re saying that we can’t get any kitten seeds?” Chrysalis asked.
“No, we can’t mine kittens, nor can we farm them…” Steve watched as Chrysalis’s ears drooped, she had obviously been looking forward to increasing the hive’s supply of kittens.
“We could breed them.” Steve offered, after a moment of silence.
The changeling queen perked right up, happy that her plan on feeding the hive wasn’t unrealistic. “Yes! Then see to it, we must have kittens for the hive!”
Steve nodded, marking his to-do list with the entry “acquire kittens”.
“Oh, and bring me Mr. Cuddles.” Chrysalis said, looking forward to the kitten’s lovely purr.
“Yes, my queen.” Steve said, bowing as he went to retrieve the kitten, who was probably being cuddled by some of the drones… again. He sighed, the drones had no sense of self discipline… in that sense they took after the queen very much.
His train of thought was interrupted by a frantic wave of drones nearly sweeping him away.
“What’s going on?” Steve yelled, trying to get through to one of the chittering drones even as he fought to stay above the tide. Unsurprisingly, he got no comprehensible answer from the chittering drones, but he finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel as he reached the tail end of the changeling tidal-wave.
“I wonder, what was that all about?” Steve asked himself, watching the drones recede down the hall… turning back down the tunnel there was a scuttling noise and movement in the corner of his eye, but when he looked there was nothing there.
The quiet was deafening and, for some reason, Steve’s heart kept threatening to climb up his neck, out his mouth and wack him in the nose with a newspaper because this is exactly the sort of setup that horror movies have.
But Steve was loyal and on a mission for her majesty, the queen — there was no way he could let a little thing like his love of scary movies deter him from retrieving the kitten.
As he made his way down the hall it became darker and gloomier and more humid, a sure sign he was approaching the nurseries where the grubs and larvae would be cared for until they molted their first exoskeleton. — Again there was movement, furtive, hidden, silent and caught only out of the corner of his eye.
“Hello?” Steve asked, his voice echoing back creepily. “Is anyone there?”
A low, soft, moan emanated from one of rooms ahead and, to Steve, it sounded like soft, forlorn, and hopeless weeping. Stepping into the dim light of one of the nurseries, Steve saw the remains of the massacred grubs, larvae, and drones… the weeping coming from one of the older drones in charge of the nurses.
“What happened?” Steve enquired.
“The kitten, no longer…” she gasped, her final words shaking Steve to his core: “cats… they kill insects.”
That, Steve knew, was his queen’s plan’s fatal flaw… as he turned to leave, he hered a sound that chilled him to his core: “Meow!”
~~ Stop Flashback Memory-Time! ~~