Cat to the Chase

Thirteen moons glittered down from the smog-packed sky.  Their silvery light cast ethereal glows across the glass sidewalks and streets.  The purple gas trapped below their feet danced and spun like living creatures.

As polluted as Neptune was, still beauty could be found.  Of course, Ace Lowell was too busy to seek out the beauty of his home planet.  He had a job to do.

His nineteenth birthday.  This had been the day he had tossed and turned over each night.  This was the day his dream was finally supposed to come true.

And, up to a point, everything had worked out exactly as he had imagined.

Buy a rundown apartment in downtown Neptune with every last penny in his and Zyla’s pockets.  Check.

Turn said apartment in a detective business.  Check.

Get his first mystery.  Check.

But the whole ‘solve the clues and save the day’ part was still out on recess.  Maybe that part had never been an option at all. Maybe all hopes of fame and fortune he had envisioned for this day had abandoned him the moment he received his first case.

In the old detective films Ace used to watch (alone, naturally--his parents were too busy ignoring him), a disaster shook the city.  An unexplained string of robberies. A mysterious disappearance of someone important. A grievous murder. And the detective, clad in his trench coat and sporting a magnifying glass in his hand, always sought out the clues and solved the mystery.  And everybody loved him for it.

Well, Ace had the trench coat and the drive to bust crime.  What he lacked, however, was an actual crime.

Darkness clung thick to the Neptunian night.  Lamplight glimmered dimly through the streets, illuminating their way.  Hands shoved in his coat pockets, Ace trudged after his partner in anti-crime, Zyla Strange.

She was the reason they had been walking around like headless chickens for two hours.  Because when Ace’s first client rushed into their apartment and presented them with the most pointless, ridiculous mystery he never dreamed of asking for, Zyla jumped to the rescue as always.

His first mystery wasn’t a robbery or a kidnapping or a murder.  Instead, a little sniffling boy had waddled up to their door, snot dripping from his nose and tears pouring from his eyes as he explained that his cat had gone missing.

No, the kid didn’t have any money to pay them.  If they wanted payment, though, he’d gladly give them the unwrapped collection of Lifesaver mints collecting dust in his pajama pockets.

Ridiculous.  Utterly ridiculous.

Huffing, Ace caught up to Zyla.  The cold air blasted against his cheeks, tinging his blue skin bluer.  He tugged his coat snugly around himself. Tattooed arms bare and pierced belly button exposed, Zyla just crammed her hands in her sweatpants pockets.  She was the kind of stubborn that would outlast a bull in a headstrong fight.

“A cat,” Ace muttered for the seventeenth time that night.  “I’ve wasted two hours of my life searching for some kid’s damn cat.  Honestly, slap up some missing posters or something! We’re detectives, not pet finders.”

“We’ll be whatever we need to be,” Zyla snapped back, voice sharper than a snakebite.  Her emerald eyes cut through the darkness to glare at him. “So this isn’t your ideal picture of a first mystery.  It’s still a mystery, Ace! And if we can help that poor boy, then we will.”

Ace sighed.  What was her deal?  Ever since he had found her huddled in a Neptunian alleyway two years ago, she had acted like the planet was one big charity case.  If someone tripped, she was there with a wad of bandages. If someone frowned, she went out of her way to brighten their day. If someone so much as sneezed, she made sure to bless them.

Maybe it was a Uranian thing.  Then again, nobody in the universe had ever been on Uranus.  The planet was an impenetrable force the galaxy had been trying to break into for centuries.  How Zyla even left Uranus, she had never said.

Beside him, Zyla drew a sharp gasp.  Ace followed her gaze in time to see a striped gray tail vanish around the corner.

Without a word, Zyla took off, violet cornrow braids flying behind her.  Ace hesitantly followed.

The moment he rounded the corner, he found it.  There, in the shadow of a Starbucks, sat a gray tabby cat.  The feline glanced up at them with intelligent blue eyes. Meeting the creature’s gaze, a shudder passed down Ace’s spine.  The cat seemed strangely human-like.

Zyla turned to him with a cheeky smile.  “See? Not a complete waste of time! We found the cat.  Mystery solved!”

“Great.  Grab the creepy cat and let’s go to bed,” he muttered back.

Instead of reaching for the cat, though, Zyla stooped down and fished into her pockets.  Ace watched her, his foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the glass sidewalk.

Finally, Zyla withdrew a regular fruit bar.  The wrapper crinkled as she wrestled it open.

Ace’s eyebrows shot up to his pale hairline.  “You’re gonna feed it?”

“It’s rude to just grab the cat,” Zyla protested.  “What if it’s unfriendly and bites me?”

“Then you can blast it with your Uranian superpowers and turn it to kitty litter.  Who knows? Maybe the kid will still give us his nasty mints.”

She ignored him as she broke off the corner of the fruit bar.  Cooing at the creature, Zyla held out her offering under the cat’s nose.

The cat blinked.  Then, with unnatural speed, it swallowed the fruity piece in one lightning-fast gulp.  Ace and Zyla froze, staring at it.

Around them, the wind turned harsh, whistling across the cityscape.  Energy crackled through the air.  

Ace felt the hairs at the nape of his neck bristle.  “What the hell--”

With a crack of thunder, reality cleaved in two.  A gaping hole alight with thousands of swirling, vibrant hues opened beneath his feet.  The yelp that rose to his mouth got sucked into oblivion with the rest of him.

The fall lasted both a millisecond and an eternity.  Ears popping, heart hammering, head spinning, Ace spiraled downward through the darkness.  He squeezed his eyes shut, biting back a scream.

After both a millisecond and an eternity, the ground rushed up to catch him.  Ace landed on both feet into soft crimson sand.

Wait, sand?

He looked around and discovered another world.  Red sand shifted and pooled across the ground. A light breeze plucked sandy grains from the floor and whisked them off into the night sky.  Above him hung two moons; they stared down like a pair of wide silver eyes.

Laughter poured all around him from dozens of old-fashioned wooden buildings hugging the narrow street.  The scent of whiskey hit his nostrils as a light-skinned man stumbled out a set of swinging barn doors.

Fingers curled tightly around his forearm.  Ace glanced over to find a pale-faced Zyla gawking at the horizon.  “Ace, we’re not on Neptune anymore.”

Ace took a deep breath.  His lungs stung with the cleanliness of the air.  He gulped another breath, intoxicated with the feeling.  Never had Neptune’s air been this clean. His planet’s atmosphere was all smoke and smog and ash.  And while Neptunians didn’t need oxygen to breathe, Ace had always secretly wondered what clean air tasted like.

In all his nineteen years of living, Ace had never set foot off Neptune.  He never had enough money to take a vacation from his home planet, and his parents could care less about showing their son the Milky Way.  With thirteen older sisters, it felt like Ace wasn’t even there. His parents didn’t have the time to notice him. With an earth-shattering mystery, he had hoped to change all of that and finally snatch their affection.

Instead, he had found a cat.  A snack-stealing, planet-hopping cat.

“Mars,” he whispered.  “We’re on Mars.”

“So cool,” Zyla breathed back.  After a second, though, she shook her head.  “We’ve got a job to do. We can’t get distracted.”

“Zyla, the cat made a freaking portal that took us to Mars.  How can we not get distracted?”

He glanced down, searching for the unusual feline.  At his feet, however, he found only sand. Ace’s heart leapt into his throat.  If the cat’s the reason why we teleported...and we don’t have the cat...we’ll be stuck here.

Frankly, it wasn’t the worst fate they could suffer.  It wasn’t like anyone on Neptune would notice their disappearance anyway.  But from what he had read about Mars, the planet was a war-torn catastrophe waiting to happen.  He wasn’t exactly cut out for fighting.

“We need to find the cat,” he said slowly, pulse pounding in his ears.

Zyla’s lips crinkled in a smirk.  “Oh, now he wants to find the cat.  Still wishing we had gotten a more interesting first mystery?”

He skillfully ignored her.  “Can you use your powers to find it?”

“You’re kidding, right?”  Zyla held out her hands. For a second, green light sparked between her fingers.  She tucked her hands back into her pockets, frowning. “My power is to blast things, not find things.”

“Fine.  Let’s start looking then.  If that cat teleports again and doesn’t take us with it, we’re screwed.”

They took off through the streets, sand kicking up in plumes behind them.  As the buildings blurred around him and the wind howled in his ears, Ace felt the tension seeping from his body.  Running wild and free, he had never felt more alive. Like he had lived his entire life on Neptune with his eyes closed, and had just stumbled back into the light to find a brand new world awaiting exploration.

Zyla turned left down an alleyway, Ace nipping at her heels.  When she stopped suddenly in front of him, Ace nearly pitched face-first into the sand with the effort of not slamming into her back.

He peered around her shoulder.  At the end of the alleyway sat the gray tabby cat.  At its paws sprawled a single slab of sand-caked cheddar cheese.

Ace’s shoulders tensed again.  “Didn’t the portal that got us here first open because that thing ate your fruit bar?”

“Yep,” Zyla whispered back, dread weighing her voice.

“Think that if it eats something else, we’ll get sucked into another portal?”

“Most likely.”

The cat darted forward, snagging the corner of the cheese between its teeth.  Reality split open again under their feet.

Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Earth, even Pluto.  They went everywhere in the span of an hour, introduced into another culture every other minute.  Each time they caught up to the cat, it would find a piece of food and take a bite, opening another portal that swallowed them into another world.  It was like a twisted birthday present for Ace--a free explore-the-galaxy pass through the Milky Way.

Roughly fifteen portals later, the familiar glassy floor appeared beneath Ace’s feet once more.  They popped up in the shadow of a Neptunian Starbucks--the exact point they had disappeared from.  The thirteen moons shone down on him again. He breathed in a lungful of smoggy air.  

It was as if they had never left at all.  Not a single aspect around them had changed.  Looking around, though, Ace saw things in a new light.  His heart felt lighter, less shackled by worry. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Before the cat could stalk away in search of more food, Zyla swept forward and scooped the feline into her arms.  It wriggled and squirmed before finally relenting to her strong grip. She glanced down at it in a mix of anger and awe.

“I am not doing that again,” she muttered.  When she looked up at Ace, though, a smile crossed her features.  “Still sleepy? We could still squeeze in a few winks before we return the cat.”

Ace snorted.  The trip around the universe hummed through his veins like a gallon’s worth of coffee.

They began walking down the street in the direction of their apartment.  As they pushed on, Ace studied every shining edge of every skyscraper reaching up to Neptune’s night sky.  For the first time in years, it took his breath away. Why had he taken Neptune for granted this whole time?  He had been so blinded by his own ambitions of making a name for himself that he had forgotten to enjoy the world around him.

Halfway across the street, Ace stopped.  “The cat’s Uranian, isn’t it?”

Zyla paused.  In her grip, the cat reached out and batted her jaw.  She cocked her head at Ace. “Duh. It can make portals by eating, genius.  It’s not some regular house cat.”

“Shouldn’t we return it to Uranus, then?  I know it’s technically that kid’s cat, but wouldn’t the cat be happier where it’s from?”  

He had always imagined Uranus as a secret paradise, a haven no outsider could ever enter.  In truth, no one knew anything about the planet. No one had ever been on it--no one except the girl and the cat in front of him.

Zyla smiled sadly.  “That’s not how it works.  Once you leave Uranus, you can’t go back.  There’s only two ways off the planet--either teleportation like this little guy probably did, or banishment.”

Ace froze.  Banishment?  

He stared at Zyla’s back as she started away.  The question he had asked ever since he first met her rose again to his lips.  “Why did you leave?”

Silence.  Like every time before, he expected the silence to ring on and on, echoing with a thousand possibilities.  Finally, though, her soft voice spliced through the night.

“That, Ace Lowell,” Zyla said, casting him the same sad smile, “is a mystery for another time.  Now come on. Let’s go save the day.”

He watched her walk away, a Uranian girl with a Uranian cat.  And gradually, when his senses pieced themselves back together again, Ace trailed after her.

Nothing about his nineteenth birthday that day had been the picturesque moment he had imagined since childhood.  His name was no closer to shining in lights. For all he knew, he could forever remain another nameless face in this vast universe.

But something about chasing that damn cat across the Milky Way had changed him.  Something about all the excitement and wonder and beauty he had experienced while racing through the galaxy resounded through his bones.  Maybe he’d never find the fame and fortune he had always wanted, or the recognition he had thought would bring him happiness.

But, step by step, he could still make a difference.  Maybe Zyla had been right all along in her passion to help others, no matter the cost.

Ace could already imagine the grin on that little boy’s face when they returned his annoying cat.  And personally, he wouldn’t trade the image of that smile for all the fame in the galaxy.