“Come out, coward, wherever you are!” I shouted.
Looking down, I saw that he had prepared the Fight Box, which was his right as the one challenged. He had chosen a particularly small one, perhaps to mock my expanded size.
I didn’t care. I would thrash him, no matter what!
“Why do you look to the ground, oh fat one, when you should be looking UP?”
I hissed in surprise. The vile traitor had also chosen to approach battle from a high branch.
Everything he knew, he learned from me! I, however, didn’t teach him everything that I knew.
“Are you ready, foe?” I asked. “Your next nap will be underground.”
Ffangg licked his paw. “It will be you who goes to join our ancestors, not I,” he said. “Perhaps I shall bury you in that litter box of which you are so fond.”
“Enough small talk,” I said. “Let us enter the Box.”
We jumped down from the trees in which we had been perched and faced off in the grass. The kittens, I now saw, were situated upon the peaked roof of a low shed. Their inquisitive eyes tracked our every move.
“You first,” Ffangg said. “Age before power.”
“No, no, after you,” I said. “Treachery before greatness!”
Several subsequent moments were spent in vicious hissing.
I decided to end negotiations by boldly leaping into the Box, but as I prepared to do so, something spectacular happened.
The sky was rent by a green flash!
A craft hovered above us, whirring softly. Slowly it descended, landing right next to the Fight Box.
The module opened, and
out of it came . . .
FLOOFFEE-FYR!!
CHAPTER 53
Most of Elba had turned out for the big event, and they all stood there with their mouths open as they watched the drone swoop and dive over our heads. Principal Brownepoint’s staticky voice was getting drowned out by Scorpion, who kept cranking up the volume of the siren.
Miss Natasha came hurrying over. “Too loud!” she shouted.
“HEY! WHY IS THE SIREN STILL PLAYING?” Cedar yelled in my ear.
I had no idea—it was 12:02!
It was then that I realized I hadn’t checked the clock in Dr. Drone’s recorder. Oh no! What if it wasn’t set to the right time? Or the right date? For all I knew, the hidden track wouldn’t switch over until the year 2525!
But even as I worried, something nobody was expecting happened.
A green flash lit up the whole sky.
“OOOOOH!” the crowd went.
“Hey, how’d those guys do THAT?” I heard Max holler.
“Because Cameron is just THAT COOL!” Brody yelled back.
It had to have something to do with Klawde, but before I could even begin to think what, the siren stopped and a voice boomed from the sky above us.
Cameron’s voice.
“ . . . everyone at this school is a loser. At least, compared to all the kids back in Brooklyn . . .”
Everyone at the fair was still looking up at the flying, talking drone. And now it seemed like they were all holding their breath.
“. . . I mean, how pathetic are those guys Max and Brody? They’re so boring, I can’t even tell them apart, except that one of them has those dumb glasses.”
Max looked like he wanted to cry, and I felt terrible.
While the recording played, Cameron ran over to Scorpion. He yelled, “Gimme that! Gimme that!” and tried to snatch the controls out of his hand. But Scorpion held them over his head.
“I wanna listen,” he said.
“Newt’s not so bad, except she’s so in love with me, it’s scary . . .”
“So not!” Newt shouted.
“So are!” Scorpion laughed.
“And Scorpion—he’s the worst kid in this entire pathetic excuse for a city! That dude has got the brains of a lobotomized flea!”
Scorpion had stopped laughing.
“It . . . it’s not true,” Cameron said, backing away from him.
Scorpion held out the remote for me to take.
“Hold this, loser,” he said.
As Scorpion took off after Cameron, the entire school broke into a cheer.
CHAPTER 54
My prayers and dreams! They had been answered! Flooffee-Fyr had returned! Finally!!
“Well, well, well,” Ffangg hissed. “Just look who came fleeing to Earth.”
The miserable lackey exited the module and slunk toward me, his head hung low.
“It’s all too much being the Supremest Leader!” Flooffee said. “I can’t handle it anymore! It’s impossible to rule a planet of cats! Nobody listens or follows directions, and no one is loyal to anything or anybody! You were right, oh lord and master! I can’t rule Lyttyrboks by myself. You can have the Scepter of Power back. I just want to be your right-paw cat again, oh omnipotent warlord!”
My whiskers tingled with resurgent pride—with victory! I knew it! I knew the day of my triumphant return would come. I turned to my kitten commandos. “Troops!” I cried. “Come with me! Let us return to Lyttyrboks, where you shall taste the sweet nectar of conquest!”
The calico’s eyes flashed with malice and delight. Her brothers looked eager to follow my lead.
“Do you hear that, Ffangg?” I said, whirling back around. “Flooffee has come back so he can serve me! Not you—ME! Ffangg! Ffangg?”
I scanned the yard for my rival. When I saw what was happening, my jaw dropped in horror.
Ffangg was climbing into the module!
“It would seem that there is a sudden opening for Supreme Leader back home,” Ffangg called. “A position most naturally filled by me.”
I lunged for the module, but Ffangg pulled up on the hover controls, and my claws scratched empty air.
“You have lost, Wyss-Kuzz! Give it up!” Ffangg snarled. “You are an Earth cat now, and an Earth cat you shall remain. You are . . . KLAWDE.”
But all of a sudden, the calico lunged from the roof of the shed and landed right on the space module! Her two brothers quickly followed her. They would be my salvation! They would overpower Ffangg and return the module to me! They would climb inside . . .
. . . and close the hatch behind them.
A burst of green light blinded me.
They were gone.
Gone gone.
I turned to Flooffee.
“Are you . . . telling me . . . that you left the wormhole protocols open?” I said. “And the keys in the ignition of the module?”
“Well, I . . . uh . . . thought we were going right back to Lyttyrboks,” Flooffee said. “Like, um, to reconquer it with you in charge and all?”
“But that’s not going to happen now, is it?” I said.
“Uh, I guess not.”
“Because now Ffangg is going to conquer it. With my commandos!”
Flooffee shrank smaller at my words. “Um, yeah, it’s kinda looking that way,” he whimpered. “But, uh, one thing, oh master?”
“What is it, you sniveling fool?”
“What happened to your tail?”
My blood boiled like a thousand volcanoes. “You witless, cross-eyed hairball with legs! I shall skin you alive!”
I pounced, but Flooffee had already darted away. He always was quicker than he looked! But when I caught that fluffy moron, I would make him pay. Oh, would I make him pay!
CHAPTER 55
Principal Brownepoint made Cam take a seminar on verbal bullying after the Harvest Festival disaster. Cam also had to write long letters of apology to Cedar, Steve, Max, Brody, Newt, Scorpion, and . . . me.
He delivered it on a Saturday morning, along with a bag of everything bagels, just like we used to eat back in Brooklyn.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling sort
of awkward about the whole situation. “But why did you write me a letter? You didn’t even insult me on the recording.”
“I know,” he said. “But I was mean to you—not just here in Elba, but also back in Brooklyn. I should have taken you to Comic-Con instead of Bronco Jones.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, Bronco is really cool.”
Cam shrugged. “You know, I used to think you were the cool kid and I was the dork. Remember? When all those kids started wanting to hang out with me, it was awesome. But it was all because of my mom.”
Suddenly, I felt like a total jerk for what I had done. “I’m sorry I recorded you,” I said.
“I’m sorry for what I said about your friends.”
I smiled. “Scorpion sort of deserved it, though.”
Cam smiled, and it kind of seemed like we might be friends again.
Someday.
When I got home, I was feeling pretty good about the way things had ended with Cam. But Klawde was not.
“I have never been more disgusted by you,” he snarled. “You and your Human notions of ‘apology’ and ‘forgiveness.’ You make me want to cough up a thousand hairballs.”
If Klawde sounded a little grumpier than usual, it was with good reason. Ffangg had had more success reconquering Lyttyrboks than he could have ever imagined, and Klawde was torturing himself by following every minute of the conquest on some kind of intergalactic feline news messaging app.
“Klawde, maybe you should just turn that off and—I don’t know—go torment Flabby Tabby a little?”
He hissed at me.
What upset him the most was that the true source of Ffangg’s power was Klawde’s own kitten commandos. They had proved themselves to be just as ferocious a fighting force as he’d hoped they’d be.
It was a few days later that I heard a strange noise coming from the basement—a noise like I’d never heard from Klawde before. It sounded like a hyena on helium.
I hurried downstairs. “Are you okay, Klawde?”
“Okay? Okay?” Klawde shouted. “I am better than okay! Oh, joyous day! The sensible felines of Lyttyrboks have overthrown that miserable, traitorous wretch! They are free of his tyranny, which means that they are ready for my tyranny! I must prepare. Surely this means that the Council will send for me. I—I—”
He was distracted by a new story flashing onto his Intra-Universal Feline News Feed. And immediately, his cackle turned to a gasp of horror.
Unfortunately for Klawde, it turned out that it wasn’t the entire feline population of Lyttyrboks who had overthrown Ffangg. It was, instead, one particular feline. And she wasn’t even from Lyttyrboks.
She was from Earth.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Although a worthless Human, Johnny Marciano has redeemed himself somewhat by chronicling the glorious adventures of Klawde, Evil Alien Warlord Cat. His lesser work concerns the pointless doings of other worthless Humans, in books such as The Witches of Benevento, The No-Good Nine, and Madeline at the White House. He currently resides on the planet New Jersey.
Emily Chenoweth is a despicable Human living in Portland, Oregon, where the foul liquid known as rain falls approximately 140 days a year. Under the top secret alias Emily Raymond, she has collaborated with James Patterson on numerous best-selling books. There are three other useless Humans in her family, and two extremely ignorant Earth cats.
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Klawde--Evil Alien Warlord Cat--Enemies #2 Page 9