Subject: Fic: JFI: Crisis on Cat-Earth (Ep5):(NC-17: Mature Themes: Final: Revised)) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 00:11:52 -0000 From: "sycoraxil" Summary: Kitty Fantastico, Spot (STTNG), El Gato (Shrek 2) and Meo (the Matrix) are investigating an alternate feline-dominated Earth, only to find it is under the control of a tyrannical mad goddess. Disclaimer: Kitty Fantastico, Spot, El Gato and Meo are respectively the properties of Joss Whedon/UPN, Paramount, Dreamworks and Warner Brothers. A certain other feline immortal guest hails from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series (DC Vertigo). As Gato slashed at the tendrils that held Tatla to the world around her, she screamed, then fell to the ground. As she tried to reassert her control over the world around her, she hissed: "What have you done to me? Tamala..." The kitten-demon's eyes glowed uncanny red, but Kitty was ready for it. She raised a ward easily as Meo rounded the final neuralnet pathway into Tatla's brain, noticing the damage from the power surge that had accompanied Gato's truncation of her external sensory array. She triggered her own pulse of electromagnetic chaos, as Tatla fell to her knees, groaning in agony, although Tamala was still an active menace: "Get up, you mechanoid freak. I will *not* risk everything that we have built here because you chose this moment to malfunction." Tamala hissed, as Meo phased back into nondigital reality. As Kitty continued to ward the effects of their attacker, her descendant shivered: "We can't leave her here, Kitty. Neither of them can be allowed to continue to interfere with other species. It's bad enough what they did in Cat-Earth's past, when they exterminated all of the other sentient species on that planet. Tatla and Tamala have wiped out other species as well. I accessed Tatla's core memory. She doesn't care about the innocent pups and elders who died when Tamala blew up the Q refugee starship. Neither of them has any conscience about their acts." Suddenly, from above them, came a still, resolute voice: "You speak true, Meo of the Bloodline Fantastico. Tatla? You will not be allowed to remain here." "Go to the Necropolis, mother. Your interference is not needed here." Tatla snarled at the figure who had materialised above them, clad in ochre and golden robes. As they looked up at the sudden theophany,Gato whispered: "Is that...?" "Yes. Bast, the ancient Egyptian catgoddess. We welcome you, Great One." Kitty said formally, as she bowed. Bast smiled down at the catmage and her cohorts: "Meo is correct. I will not allow Tatla and her younger incarnation to pollute this world further." Spot cleared his throat: "Gato and queens, we have a problem. Tatla/Tamala is bound deeply into the subatomic fabric of this universe, and she's the only thing that's keeping it from the broiling antimatter storm across the probability void. If they go, it will consume it. We would be no better than this creature and her feline collaborators." "Great One? I have an idea..." Bast turned her eyes toward the smaller feline, and read her mind. She smiled, then turned to the kitten and mechanoid, who began to retreat as the feline goddess' visage turned dark and wrathful: "Tatla and Tamala, hear my judgement. You have ravaged this universe. You obliterated other sentients in the past of this alternate earth. You have killed half a million of our own kind. You have killed other species with impunity. However, to obliterate or exile you would sentence this world's felinekind to genocide itself. You are stripped henceforth of any ability to control this worlds Terran catkind through the CattyCorp interface. You are forbidden from travelling outside this specific alternate probability. And I grant you full ethical consciousness of what you have done. Now, begone..." And with that, the JFI quartet found themselves at home, as Gato blinked: "It was just and merciful. And yet...I still grieve for that world's past. I have lived on a polysentient world too, and I know what it is like to lose innnocent kittens to something like that." Meo padded over: "Our species is as capable of evil as any other. However, we can learn ethical responsibility for the consequences of our actions too. Come on tabby boy. I'll patch you up..." "I fear it'll take more than bodily repairs this time, querida." "Later, my dear. Don't wait up, Kitty." As Kitty watched the JFI mainframe log their latest experience, she blinked: "I...killed without conscience there, Spot. Dark Garfield...whatever it was." "It was threatening us, Kitty. And it was hardly harmless. I know that you cherish sentient life, but that universe was a dark place. In it, power corrupted. And I've known you long enough to know that you are not corrupt, that you did what you had to do to protect the rest of us. You could never become like Tatla and Tamala." "Ironic, really. If there was a Crisis on Cat-Earth, then that crisis was born of its own lack of conscience and responsibility for its own actions, more so than the corrupt tyrannical deities who ruled it as their own fiefdom." "Yeah, but we freed it. They'll have to find their own way now. At least we gave them that." "Whatever "that" might mean..." EPILOGUE: CAT-EARTH: Across the cosmos, angry catkind pulled down statues and tore down CattyCorp photographs. Several million light years from Cat-Earth, Tatla and Tamala watched helplessly as their empire fell, and knew powerlessness for the first time in their existence, unable to challenge their children's freedom. In the temples, cats assembled as they became aware of what their world had been founded on for the first time in their own lives, and candleflames burnt and tears were shed. Cat-Earth was coming to terms with its own past, and its inhabitants grieved for what they had lost. Only time would tell whether those lessons were lasting ones that would affect the survival of their civilisation, but the JFI had taught them a new word for their species' vocabulary. Justice. Justice, itself. THE END