Chapter Text
"Hey Kitten, you feeling borrred today?"
There was a time when Doctor Barbara Ann Minerva (PhD Greek Mythology, PhD Archeology) would have felt at least vaguely disquieted about the prospect of a goddess talking to her in a voice that no one else could hear.
At the very least, she would have felt somewhat depressed about the fact that it was an Egyptian goddess rather than one of the Greek deities whom she'd been so thoroughly enamored with as a child. But, there were worse things in life than having 'outside pantheon' divine experiences.
Barbara had once stood upon a nameless island in the Black Sea and pathetically begged, "It's not a myth. It's real. But if it's real, then where the hell are you?" to the sky in desperation for some sign that she wasn't just a conspiracy theorist obsessed with rumors and a few artifacts that hinted at the possibility of Amazons being more than a fanciful fable. The denizens of Mount Olympus (who, thanks to her current girlfriend Diana of Themyscira, she now knew existed with 100% certainty) had chosen to remain utterly silent, leaving the archeologist to stew in bitter humiliation.
One scratch with the right magical blade though, and Bastet had seemingly decided to make herself Barbara's friend for life. Friend, and also patron deity, one who had practically showered her new "Favorite Kitten" with divine blessings until the archaeologist possessed enough mythological might to stand toe to toe with Wonder Woman!
So, if Barbara would never win the favor of the Greek goddess whose Roman name she shared, she could do plenty worse than being Bastet's chosen champion. Case in point, she used to feel that she was practically being run ragged by all the work required of her as one of the world's foremost archeologists; these days, her "Cheetah Speed" had allowed her to complete such tasks (in the privacy of her own home) so quickly that she now had more free time than she knew what to do with.
You have something in mind?
She allowed the thought to "drift" to the "top" of her brain, confident that Bastet would "hear" it without any difficulty.
"Now this is gonna sound a little crrrazy…." Bastet began.
Because the rest of my association with you has been so sane and rational.
The archeologist saw no reason to shy away from being sarcastic with her patron deity, not when Bastet always seemed amused whenever Barbara gave into her more catty side, even if the feline deity herself was the target.
"That's rrright, Kitten. How would you like a chance to do a favorrr forrr anotherrr rrreality's verrrsion of me?" Bastet inquired.
Wait, another reality's? How does that work? Is this other version of you evil?
Barbara felt confident in saying that she was more deeply aware of the existence of other realities than most people on Earth, primarily because she'd once witnessed a supervillainess walking through a portal between different realities. Still, it was one thing for her to know they existed, and something else entirely to take a trip to one of them.
"Not evil, just lonely. That's why she asked me if I could lend herrr someone to help brrring a smile to herrr face." Bastet reassured the archaeologist.
Not that Barbara was feeling anything close to fully at ease at the moment. Somehow, she doubted that whatever the other version of Bastet wanted, it would be something as simple as being told a few jokes.
Is the other reality's version of Diana evil?
"You arrre totally asking the rrright questions, Kitten! No, yourrr beloved also isn't evil in that rrreality. In fact, I prrromise you won't encounterrr herrr. Though if you do this favorrr to my otherrr self, the odds are verrry good it'll end up helping the otherrr verrrsion of yourrr 'Prrrincess' soonerrr or laterrr." Bastet promised.
The archeologist who had been lazily lying on the couch only a few moments ago was all but instantly standing up and completing her transformation into the supervillainess Cheetah, her normal outfit being replaced with a black workout top and shorts (there was no point in dressing conservatively when her body was already covered in golden black spotted fur).
"So, how do I get to this other reality exactly?" She now all but implored Bastet.
Barbara Ann Minerva loved Diana of Themyscira. The archeologist was laden down with a whole host of personality defects that made it difficult for her to properly express that love (and frequently improperly expressed it by seeking to become Wonder Woman's newest Nemesis), but that didn't make her feelings any less real. If doing a favor for another version of Bastet would make another (non-evil) version of Diana's life better, well, what more motivation could the archeologist possibly ask for?
In response to her question, a shimmering multicolored portal suddenly materialized in Barbara's living room, which was certainly a convenient way to resolve that particular problem. Though it did abruptly bring one final question to mind that needed to be asked.
"How long am I going to be away for? If Diana comes back home from the Themysciran Embassy and finds that I'm missing, only for me to pop up again through a magical portal a few hours later, that's gonna be kinda trick to explain away..." She couldn't help but worry.
"Rrregarrrdless of how long you spend in the otherrr rrreality you'll rrreturn to find only a few seconds have passed in this one," Bastet promised.
That's also highly convenient.
"Look, do you rrreally want me to explain the complicated naturrre of crrross rrreality trrravel when made possible by two differrrent verrrsions of the same goddess acting in cooperrration with one anotherrr, or do you want to go on an adventurrre?" Barbara couldn't see Bastet's face, but she suspected the goddess was pouting.
Even if I did ask you to explain, you'd just say it's too boring to bother with.
"And some people wonderrr why you'rrre my Favorrrite Kitten!" Bastet giggled, clearly impressed with the archaeologist's ability to predict her actions.
If what Bastet had told her about alternate realities was true, then there exist many different versions of Barbara Ann Minerva. Maybe there is a version of her somewhere who doesn't accept Bastet's offer, but not this one, not here.
Cheetah willingly stepped through the portal and braced herself for whatever came next…
XXX XXX XXX
Veronica Cale was proud of what she'd done with her life. It wasn't just that she'd become the national security adviser to the president of the United States; it was that she was actively making the world a better, more orderly place.
She's also proudly living up to her family's legacy, as the Cales before her had been judges, governors, congressmen, generals, and senators. It's a name that people have spoken with respect, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War, and Veronica was proud to follow in their hallowed footsteps.
Because advising the President on matters of national security isn't the only thing that Veronica does, she also oversees numerous governmental task forces designed to stomp out small problems before they have a chance to grow bigger. Being a lifelong native of California, her father had once overseen the state's program for using inmates as auxiliary firefighters and taught her how, if everything went as planned, people wouldn't even realize the program existed.
That was the ideal Cale strove to match, for her to wield power so smoothly and efficiently that the people of this great country would go about living their perfectly ordered lives heedless of the invisible railings that served to keep them on the right path.
"Madam Cale, we have a message for you from Doctor Kapatelis with R.R.S. She said it was urgent..." Announced Kyle, one of her numerous flunkies.
The R.R.S was one of Veronica's own personal creations: The Relic Resolution Service. A group of people responsible for making sure that life carried on as it should, with tomorrow proving to be a day exactly like yesterday.
Since certain unpleasant aspects of humanity's past didn't have the good graces to stay buried, every time they tried to crawl out of the grave, the R.R.S. would dump another shovel of dirt on top of them. If that alone wasn't enough, well, you could always use a bulldozer instead.
Honestly, Veronica was amazed that the United States had managed to get by without something like the R.R.S. before she'd come along. It had somehow been willing to simply play catch-as-catch-can with the disturbingly high number of "divine" objects that seemed to be capable of granting the people exposed to them superhuman abilities. Just imagine how many problems a specific bewinged former archeologist could have ended up causing if he hadn't proven himself to be a reasonable man who knew that with great power came great responsibility to serve his nation!
So, the members of the R.R.S. had been tasked with the job of locating errant relics all across the globe and "resolving" the threat that they posed. It didn't matter if the process was as simple as melting them down to their component materials or as extreme as launching them into a black hole; every single profane object that represented a threat to the proper state of affairs was to be dealt with.
After all, who would want to live in a world where any random nobody could accidentally stumble upon the wrong arcane trinket and abruptly be imbued with powers beyond those of their fellow men? Power belonged in the hands of those who had spent their entire lives learning how to wield it; to argue otherwise was insanity of the highest caliber!
In response to Veronica's curt nod, a large screen in front of her was soon filled with an image of the gray-haired Julia Kapatelis, one of the foremost researchers in the R.R.S.
"How bad is it?" As always, the national security adviser saw no reason to beat around the bush.
"Bad. If left unresolved, it could cause an outbreak of 'Cat Scratch Fever', Madame Cale." The older woman answered with a noticeable tremor in her voice.
"You told me that particular 'disease' was deader than smallpox..." Veronica half growled, half gasped in exasperation.
"I was mistaken. This was a rare edge case. It started when one of those under me became aware of an object named 'Ailuros' Onyx'. Ailuros, being the ancient Greek word for 'cat' and onyx for 'claw', it was described as simply the 'Cat's Claw' in all the paperwork that was passed along to me.
"It was only when I bothered to do a full review of the matter that I realized what the initial translator hadn't… Centuries ago, the word 'ailuros' wasn't just used to refer to cats in general; it also had another meaning. Somewhere in Gateway City, there's an item whose name, I believe, is more accurately translated as 'The Claw of Bastet'..." Julia Kapatelis lamented.
Veronica Cale was tempted to continue chewing Julia's head off, but given how pale the older woman's face already was, there didn't seem to be much point. Dr. Kapatelis looked painfully aware of what gigantic clusterf**k this could become, and it wouldn't help Cale if she drove one of her own top researchers into having a heart attack simply for bringing her bad news.
At least Julia had been smart enough to eventually notice the mistake that her even more incompetent underling had committed.
"What are we going to do about it?" Veronica pressed.
"Before I contacted you, I managed to trace its most likely location and dispatched an R.R.S. field team to get a handle on things." Julia hadn't risen to her current position without growing familiar with her superior.
In particular, Veronica preferred that no problem should be reported to her without being accompanied by some manner of solution, or even better, with said solution already in progress.
"Whoever made that translation error, I want them fired within the next hour, and I want them blacklisted from ever again holding a government job by the end of the day." Veronica declared as she slammed a gloved fist down on the table in front of her in exasperation.
Although she had no real patience for trying to learn loads of ancient rigamarole about the far too numerous deities who kept trying to regain relevance in a world that no longer needed or desired their presence, Veronica was at least aware of certain patterns. One of them was that just like with people, nothing good ever came from gods who were described as "chaotic".
There was a reason why artifacts connected to Bastet had always been among those most highly sought for "resolution" by the R.R.S., and Veronica Cale would be able to find a happy person in Hell before she'd let some fur-faced Egyptian goddess gain a superpowered foothold on American soil!
XXX XXX XXX
"Welcome to my realm." Intoned the other reality's version of Bastet.
"This… doesn't feel right." Barbara couldn't help but reflect as she looked around, and somehow, even though she was in her feline form, Cheetah still felt a chill start to creep up her spine.
Bastet was a massive (standing at least seven feet tall) mixture of human and feline with midnight black fur and eyes that seemed to unaturally flicker between the traditional "cat green" and golden amber every time you stopped paying attention to them. From the waist down, she wore the remains of a red and black dress of some kind, but it was tattered and ragged now. Likewise, she was adorned with numerous pieces of golden jewelry, but they were all faded and tarnished.
Her 'realm' was a desert at midnight, orange sand contrasting sharply with the blue-black of the sky above. Most unsettling of all were the numerous tilted and crumbling structures composed of weathered brown stone that erupted from the sand at various intervals; the transformed archeologist had visited more than her fair share of ancient ruins, but none of them had managed to feel this desolate.
"Believe me, nothing has felt right for a very long time." Alternate Bastet (for lack of a better title to call her by) sighed as she drew closer to Barbara.
She wrapped her fingers around Cheetah's chin, revealing there remained plenty of strength in the goddess's limbs, though thankfully her grip was more firm than harsh.
"I'm still a little surprised that I was able to convince my other self to aid me in this matter. She even sent her 'Favorite Kitten' to get the job done, promising that she had no servant more faithful, skilled, or powerful at her disposal." Alternate Bastet's voice was far more morose than Barbara was used to. That and…
"You're not trilling!" The words emerged as more of an accusation than the transformed archeologist had intended.
"Oh, you want to hearrr me purrrr? You would need to give me a rrreason firrrst." Alternate Bastet responded, revealing that she was indeed capable of the same verbal tic that Barbara was used to hearing from her own version of the cat goddess.
"I take it you're not as... happy as my Bastet?" Barbara asked awkwardly, not sure what else she could say to sum up the difference between the two variations of the same goddess.
"What do I have to be happy about?" Alternate Bastet sighed, as she briefly went down on one knee and began to run her hands through the "fur" of a "cat" that was more white specter than any form of mortal feline.
"Over the course of the last century, barely the blink of an eye to an immortal being, I have seen all my most cherished relics ground into dust, and all who were touched by even a fraction of my power sent to the afterlife far sooner than they deserved. Where there should be song, joy, and pleasure, there is only death and silence.
"So, I behaved as any god worthy of the name would when they find themselves losing a contest to mortals… I decided to start cheating." Now there was a smile on Bastet's face, all be it a more predatory one than Barbara would typically imagine her own version of the feline deity wore.
"Which is why you decided to put your head together with, well, 'yourself'. What exactly do you need me to do for you?" Cheetah inquired politely.
"Ugghh… you're practically groveling." Alternate Bastet all but spat the word.
"One thing I can't stand it's people groveling." The feline deity insisted.
Then all of a sudden, instead of anger, there was a look that combined cruel cunning with playful amusement in Alternate Bastet's eyes.
"Don't fall on your knees before figures of authority, pretend you're a supervillainess! I need the kind of crazy cheetah who would look at the world's most powerful Amazon Princess and say to herself, 'yes, that is who I, an ordinary archeologist, am going to throw myself into battle against again and again, not even trying to conquer her, simply for the pleasure of her company!' Have I got the right cat?" The feline deity demanded as she drew herself up to her full height before Barbara.
"By a strange coincidence, you do." Said 'ordinary archeologist' admitted.
"Purrfect. This quiet offends Bastet, so you shall make it loud. You see, I need a new high priestess in the mortal world; one who can act as my champion and preach my doctrine of pleasurrre." Bastet's opening and closing words managed to win another pair of trills from her lips.
"Not you, of course. I'm only borrowing you, New Kitten. No, what I need you to do is take one of my relics and deliver it to a suitable recipient of my divine blessings." Alternate Bastet further explained.
"Which relic exactly, and how am I supposed to know when I find someone 'suitable' to give it to?" Barbara wondered.
Honestly, so far as she could tell, Cheetah's own version of Bastet had been anything but picky about determining who was "worthy", given that she'd been willing to accept Barbara Ann Minerva, warts and all.
"The relic is one I believe you're quite familiar with: The Claw of Bastet. As for who to deliver it to, don't worry, while I can't touch the mortal realm, I've still been able to watch it. I already have a new high priestess in mind and can direct you to her. You shouldn't have too much trouble reaching her once you've secured the Claw." Bastet promised.
"When you say 'I shouldn't have too much trouble,' exactly how far apart is your would-be high priestess from the Claw of Bastet?" Barbara had a sinking suspicion that she wouldn't like the answer.
"The Claw is in California, the high priestess is in Maryland." Alternate Bastet answered with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders.
Sure enough, Barbara did not like that answer.
For a brief moment, she was even tempted to protest, to talk about how absurd, bordering on insane, it was, to want her to travel from one side of the United States of America to the other. Then, she took a deep breath and asked a more important question instead.
"Are all my powers going to be intact in this reality?" Cheetah crossed the fingers of both hands as the words left her mouth; she did not look forward to the prospect of traveling such a distance via hitchhiking, at best, or even worse, having to walk the entire journey.
Alternate Bastet responded by tapping the center of Barbara's forehead with her right index finger.
"They are now." Bastet snickered with considerable delight.
Given that she'd already run from Gateway City to Metropolis and back again, the prospect of going from California to Maryland didn't seem quite so daunting anymore.
"As for getting my paws on the relic, let me guess, your blessed Claw is currently on display in some fancy museum I'll need to break into?" The archeologist wasn't quite sure why, but either there was something about the very nature of this place, the sight of how forlorn Alternate Bastet was, or simply how it wasn't her home reality that was giving her a much more freewheeling attitude towards crime.
"It is adorable how you think they would allow such a thing to happen. No, my Claw resides in a small out-of-the-way pawnshop, surviving only because no one has realized its true nature, yet." Alternate Bastet cautioned her chosen delivery cheetah.
Barbara didn't care in the slightest for the tone of voice with which the feline goddess had uttered the word "they", it was the kind of tone that the archeologist would only use to describe the Legion of Doom… except even worse, since she technically was a (strictly for the purpose of baseball games) member of said Legion.
"When I'm doing stuff in my reality, the Bastet who I belong to can talk to me more or less whenever she wants; is that true here also?" Cheetah probed cautiously, still not sure if there might be key differences between the two versions of reality she should be aware of.
"There's a reason I haven't given you instructions about where in Maryland my future high priestess lives yet. Don't worry, I'll be with you the entire time. You might even manage to give me a reason to purrrr before all is said and done." Bastet promised.
Then she tapped her right index and middle finger on Barbara's forehead, causing the sand beneath the archeologist's feet to open up, swallowing her whole.
XXX XXX XXX
The next thing Barbara knew, she was standing in the middle of a semi-familiar street in Gateway City.
Semi-familiar because it seemed like Gateway City was having a lot worse weather than it normally did. While back in the archeologist's reality, her adopted hometown was known for its bright sunshine offset by pleasantly cool winds, here everything seemed to be overcast with a weird, vaguely reddish hue.
Huh, it'd be a bit harsh of me to say this entire world looks like it is at least 10% more evil than my own reality… but that is exactly the vibe I'm getting.
Seeing that the store directly in front of her had a sign advertising its nature as a pawnshop, Barbara decided it was doubtlessly the best place to start looking. That, and standing around in the street (thankfully, it was so early in the morning there weren't many people around) in her Cheetah form was bound to draw attention she could do without.
The door to the pawnshop was locked, but Barbara had done a fair amount of practice at picking such contraptions with her claws. Within five seconds, she'd popped the lock open and gone inside. She knew what the Claw of Bastet looked like in her reality, so hopefully…
"It looks the same in this one as well, curved golden dagger with a cat's head for the pommel," Bastet reassured her.
Awesome.
So Barbara continued inspecting the place until someone decided to interrupt…
"Hold it right there, asshole!" Shouted a male voice, accompanied by the telltale "clack" of a pistol having its slide racked.
It seemed that the store's owner had decided to clock in.
The middle-aged man's tune changed the moment he got a closer look at Barbara.
"What the f**k?" He gasped, understandably shaken by the fact that he'd found not some ordinary hoodlum robbing his store, but instead a being that probably looked more like a cryptid than your traditional spandex-clad supervillain.
With her superior speed, Cheetah could more or less effortlessly knock the shop owner unconscious, but that would hardly be fair, given she was the one who was unquestionably in the wrong at the moment.
"You ever hear the legends of how really nasty things keep happening to people who break into the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs?" Barbara suggested keeping her tone polite and conversational.
"...Yes?" The pawnshop's owner eventually answered after thinking the matter over for a bit.
"I'm one of those curses. Luckily, since you didn't directly remove the relic in question, the gods are feeling merciful, and they only sent me to retrieve it. That said, if you do insist on trying to stop me, they may stop feeling merciful." Cheetah cautioned him.
The shop owner blinked, took a moment to check his watch, then returned his attention to the "living curse" who had broken into his pawnshop.
"I am either too drunk or not drunk enough for this. Just take whatever it is and go." He decided.
"Bastet bless you for being so understanding. By the way, do you have a storage room somewhere? I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for yet, and..." Before Barbara could finish her request, the shop owner produced a keyring, removed an object from it, and tossed it to her.
"It's upstairs. Just hide that under the register when you're done." He suggested, before closing the door and walking away from a situation that he clearly felt was very much no longer his problem.
Cheetah rushed upstairs, opened up the storeroom, and swiftly located the Claw of Bastet. The dagger looked largely the same as she remembered it in her own reality; the only differences were that someone had removed the twin emeralds that used to serve as the "eyes" of the cat, and the gold was dull and tarnished to a degree that suggested it was heavily alloyed with other, less valuable metals.
"Step one, check." Barbara muttered to herself as she began to carefully twist the fabric of her top around the dagger so that she could "hold" it while keeping both hands free.
"Off to an excellent start, New Kitten. Now take the Claw to 18952 E. Fisher Road, St. Mary's City." Bastet complimented her.
Granted, walking into a pawnshop and scaring off the owner was unquestionably the easy part. The hard part was going to be performing a one-day cross-country marathon.
The medium part of the job was the half a dozen men dressed in the sort of all-black body armor the archaeologist associated with police officers who routinely fought especially well-armed criminals waiting for her as she tried to retrace her steps.
"Federal agents, freeze!" Commanded the one in the lead, who also seemed to be wearing some kind of weird backpack while brandishing an especially unorthodox pistol.
"Or what?" Barbara countered.
The group leader squeezed his weapon's trigger… and a gout of flame erupted from the barrel.
Huh.
Even when you had super speed, flamethrowers were among the most difficult weapons to dodge, as their attacks occupied a lot more space than a single bullet. The problem of avoiding getting scorched was complicated still further by the fact that they'd caught Barbara in such a confined space.
So Cheetah decided to respond by simply jumping upwards, smashing straight through a roof or two in the process.
"What the hell was that?"
"Looked like some kind of gigantic cat!?"
"Did we get them?"
"I think that… whatever it was, had the relic!"
Voices bubbled up from below as Barbara took a moment to catch her breath and consider her options.
She still had the Claw of Bastet; she could make a break for the nearest interstate highway and start running for Maryland. She could do that… but whoever these assholes were, they were the type of people who brought a flamethrower with them when they came looking for ancient artifacts.
Barbara Ann Minerva didn't think of herself as an especially violent or vindictive person, but for people who seemingly made it their profession to destroy historical relics, she was willing to make an exception.
I know next to nothing about how this universe works, or who exactly those Fahrenheit 451-looking sons of bitches are, but I'm not leaving until I've kicked all of their asses.
"Ooh ho ho, here we go! Let's see how sharp your claws are, New Kitten..." It seemed that, despite this being a personal vendetta, completely unrelated to the larger task at hand, Bastet was only too eager to observe Barbara taking a "detour".
Cheetah raced over to the side of the building, jumped back down to street level, and then zoomed back inside the pawnshop.
"She's…!" The agent who had been watching the entrance in case of exactly this occurrence began to cry out a warning.
Too slow.
Before they could finish a second word, Barbara effortlessly punted him across the room, slamming him into the group's leader. A flamethrower could do a lot of things, but it was completely useless for defending yourself against another human being flying through the air at you.
The other agents tried to bring their weapons to bear on Barbara, but one blow each from Cheetah's fists was enough to knock each of them unconscious before a single shot was fired. Then she took the time to kick the flamethrower-wielding agent in the head for good measure.
"That's what you get for trying to destroy ancient history!" Barbara scoffed dismissively as she proudly dusted off her hands.
"Whoever the hell is this, you just made the biggest and last mistake of your life..." A strangely familiar woman's voice full of icy fury emerged from something worn by the flamethrower-wielding agent that wasn't quite a radio but certainly seemed to function like one.
Figuring that its now unconscious owner had no current need for it, Barbara picked up the device as she contemplated the nature of that voice, and who it might possibly belong to.
Ehh, what do I have to lose?
"Is this Veronica Cale by any chance?" Barbara called out, wondering if in this reality her least favorite CEO had somehow found a way to be an even worse person.
"WHAT?!" Cheetah had only been guessing before, but she was quite certain now.
"Well, since it's hardly fair for only one of us to know the other's name, you can call me 'Spots'." Barbara declared proudly, figuring that even "Cheetah" was a more dignified title than this version of Veronica Cale deserved.
"I'm talking to a child..." Veronica groaned in a manner suggesting that the longer this conversation went on, the more grey hairs she'd be waking up with tomorrow morning.
"Meeooww." A woman in her early thirties with two PhD's who spoke nine languages fluently, while also being passable in another seven, replied.
"They're going to invent brand new words to describe the things I do to you," Veronica promised.
"You'll have to catch me first." Cheetah taunted before she dropped the communications device, slid the key she'd been loaned into its requested hiding place, and took off running.
XXX XXX XXX
And just like that, a day that had started as a perfectly pleasant DEFCON 4 had just descended to DEFCON 3.
Veronica sat at her desk, drinking a glass of ice water as information flew across various screens surrounding her.
"Target self-identified as 'Spots,' and based on the R.R.S. body cam footage, she resembles a mix of human and cheetah, not unlike Project SS-1 Subject: Rich." Pointed out a random data analysis drone wearing a name tag that said "Adrianna".
"Rich wouldn't have been brazen enough to take on an entire field team; she hates being set on fire." Veronica pointed out while raising a suspicious eyebrow.
Of all the monsters kept locked away as part of SS-1, Priscilla Rich was actually one of the "weaker" ones. Her blood had somehow been infected with what could only be defined as a "magical curse", resulting in her undergoing a feline-themed transformation, but from what they'd seen so far, Rich was a pussycat next to "Spots".
"If you remember, Madame Cale, some of us have a theory that whatever happened to Rich, she only got a 'half' dose of it. That's why her entire body isn't covered by fur, unlike Spots. They could have a similar power source, but now we're finally seeing someone who got a 'full serving'. That, or Spots could have simply managed to gain access to the powers we feared the Claw of Bastet was supposed to contain, in which case at least we won't have to worry about her being able to spread it to anyone else..." Adrianna suggested with an awkward smile.
"Assumption is the mother of all f**kups. We're going to act like Spots' powers are completely unrelated to the Claw, and if we don't stop her soon, it's only a matter of time before we have two of these monsters running around causing problems." Cale insisted before taking another long drink of water to try to cool her simmering temper.
"Well, the good news is that, at the moment, so far as we can tell, Spots is 99% 'running around' and only 1% 'causing problems'." The tech geek reflected, pointing towards a black dot being tracked by numerous satellites.
"She's running around, at Mach 1. Wherever she's going, she's already out of California and into Nevada. What assets are we currently cleared to deploy inside our own borders to deal with a threat moving that fast?" The national security adviser demanded.
"Project Olympus did recently give us a trio of their new 'Mercury' class cars that we've never sent into the field yet... they're supposed to be the fastest thing on four wheels. Under laboratory conditions, they've cleared Mach 3..." Adrianna offered.
"Tell them to turn that furry freak into roadkill," Cale ordered without a moment's hesitation.
End of Chapter One.
AN: This story was originally going to be only one chapter long like most of my Changing Her Spots side stories, but my family is in town this weekend so I don't have as much free time as normal (I do still have 6K words of what comes next ready but there's still more I need to write for it), so I decided to break it down into two parts (one part for set up one part for payoff) the same way that most of the "plot arcs" in CHS are broken down. Due to the rather unorthodox nature of this story's plot (even compared to the "normal" stuff happening in Changing Her Spots), I decided to give it a side story rather than make it part of the "main story".
Barbara, on a nameless island on the Black Sea, begging for proof that the Amazons/Greek gods exist is a reference to Wonder Woman Volume 5 Issue 8, an issue I reference so repeatedly that you can turn it into a drinking game.
There's no hard and fast proof that Absolute Veronica Cale grew up with two wealthy parents in California (as opposed to being raised by a dirt poor single mother in Texas like in Greg Rucka's 2003 run where she was first introduced) but I like to think that it makes more sense for her character as someone obsessed with defending the status quo if Absolute Veronica Cale was born into privilege and power rather than needing to work herself to the bone to attain it.
The R.R.S. was something I completely made up, but it feels very in keeping with Absolute Veronica Cale. We had yet to see the Absolute version of Julia Kapatelis at the time the story was posted, so, given that the Absolute Universe has a pattern of people who normally make up a hero's supporting cast instead start out serving their villains (the Robins in Absolute Batman, Lois Lane in Absolute Superman), I decided it'd be appropriate to have her be one of Veronica Cale's top researchers. Absolute Julia might be a "true believer," or she might only be doing it for the large paychecks he needs to pay for the prosthetics that allow her daughter Vanessa to walk/dance again after she was crippled in an accident, fill in the blanks however you wish!
Absolute Bastet's physical description, along with that of her realm, is based on her looks from the three-part miniseries "Sandman Presents: Bast" (Bast and Bastet are effectively a "Tim" and "Timothy" thing), which featured a more dour and downcast Bastet, one painfully aware of her lack of human followers in the modern world. That seemed a good match for Absolute Bastet, and it's rather unlikely we'll ever get an official depiction of Bastet in the Absolute Universe...
The address Bastet gives Barbara (because it would have hurt the verisimilitude of the story not to give an actual address) is a real place in Maryland. To avoid doxing anyone, it's the public address of Saint Mary's College of Maryland. Assume that in the Absolute Universe, either it's been replaced with private housing, or it was never a college in the first place.
Fahrenheit 451 is a novel by Ray Bradbury about a dystopian future where "firemen" (who look like this https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/14221030/Fahrenheit-451-Michael-Shannon-Michael-B-Jordan.jpg https://www.engadget.com/engadget/2018-02-26-michael-b-jordan-burns-books-fahrenheit-451-trailer/fire-ed.jpg) exist to light books on fire to suppress knowledge. You can assume the R.R.S. agents Barbara deals with are outfitted similarly.
