Jelly and Mastazita darted towards each other, claws out.
He swiped at her face and was met by her left paw, which shunted his arm back, exposing his face and chest.
She landed a devastating blow to his neck, followed by an uppercut to the chin, which lifted him a few inches from the floor.
As he landed on his hind paws, he took another swipe - this time, connecting with the side of her face.
Her jaw cracked and shifted to the side, barely held together by the skin and fur surrounding the bone.
“Ghaaaa,” she grabbed her chin and shunted the joint up and back in to her face and open her mouth, “Ghhhuur.”
Mastazita palmed her chest and punched her so hard she crashed back-first against a piece of ship.
He ran after her, swishing his tail and swiped at her face. She held her paws up and blocked the attack by grabbing his paw and wrenching it across her own body.
She grabbed his shoulders and rammed her head into his temple.
Mastazita squealed as a jolt of pain thundered through his cranium, followed by the sound of a skull shattering.
Jelly lifted her hind legs from the floor and booted him across the face.
She somersaulted in the air and dug on her hind legs into the dusty ground, ready to attack again.
Mastazita swiped at her feet, but missed with each attempt as she jumped around his paws. Every time her paws hit the ground, it cracked apart and threatened to break entirely.
She delivered a devastating kick to his face, spinning him around on the spot.
“Ghwuuurgh,” Mastazita staggered around, temporarily disoriented.
Jelly inspected her infinity claws. The one on her index finger was badly broken. The remaining talons were battered and threatened to snap off.
Mastazita caught her off-guard. He stepped forward and threw two punches - left, then right. She blocked them, one after the other, as he continued to punch even more.
Her left arm blocked his right punch, and vice versa, as she stepped back and he bounded forward.
A final right hook from Mastazita came screaming at her face. Jelly grabbed his wrist in her left paw and kept it held up. She clenched the infinity claws on her right hand together.
The pair struggled as their faces met, nose-to-nose, once again.
“Nggg,” Jelly groaned, trying to keep his fist away from the side of her head, “Grrrrrr.”
She stabbed him in his side with her infinity claws.
“Grrruuhh,” Mastazita growled in pain as the talons pierced his flesh and hit a vital organ, “Buuuhhh.”
Jelly winced as her paw entered the cavity. She clenched her claws shut around something inside him.
“Grrrruuuhhhh,” she grunted, breathlessly, as she twisted her paw forty-five degrees up the side of his body, tearing through the flesh.
“Roowwaarrr,” Mastazita’s right paw slumped in hers as she pulled out a lump of his flesh from under his left arm.
Jelly had done some serious damage this time.
She flung the remains against the wall, pushed his paw away and booted him in the chest.
He fell back, bleeding profusely from his side.
Jelly staggered to him and tried to catch her breath, “Ugh, ugh,” she squeezed her eyes shut and felt like puking, but the beast in front of her needed to die.
Mastazita howled in agony as he attempted to straighten his back.
“Gwuh.”
He just about managed to pace forward and readied himself to punch her lights out permanently.
He lifted his right paw and swiped at her. She lifted her left paw and tried to block the blow.
Their claws rammed together and snapped shut. Jelly wasted no time and pulled his arm down with hers. She bent her right arm back and went for an uppercut, claws first.
Jelly socked him in his abdomen, stabbing her claws into his stomach.
Mastazita let out a deathly growl.
She winced and pressed the front of her body against his and lifted her paw up, trying to maximize the internal damage.
He fell back and took her with him. They landed face-to-face, her head over his, as she expanded and contracted her claws in the pit of his stomach.
She grunted and squinted in his pyramid eyes.
The color drained from his face, “Heh,” he snorted and coughed up a lump of dark-red phlegm from his mouth, “Grrrr.”
Jelly squeezed her eyes shut, yanked her arm upwards. Her infinity claws sliced through his stomach and flesh, up to his chest, “Ugh. Ngggg.”
Mastazita squealed - the agony was so intense it afforded him a last-minute flurry of energy. He lifted his right, bloodied paw and slammed his knee between her legs and booted her off his body.
Jelly lifted her right paw as he kicked her back. Her infinity claws tore out from his stomach, taking a portion of the vital organ with it.
She stepped back and slid across the bloodied grains of sand, falling to her knees.
“Whu-whu,” Mastazita huffed, his voice somehow lighter in tone, “Bwwwuuurgggghhh.”
She slammed his elbows to the ground. He turned onto his side and hoisted himself to his knees. A quick look down the length of his body told him everything he needed to know.
He’d lost a lot of blood.
The weakness rumbled down his shoulders, past his abdomen and struck his knees, forcing him to slide across the ground.
Jelly splayed her hind legs out and pressed herself against the ground. She looked up with a steely determination to kill.
Mastazita groaned and finally got himself to his feet.
A blast of pure white light crashed against the ceiling, burning the fur and flesh away from his spine.
The beam of light rammed against the ceiling, sending a shower of rocks and dust down around them.
The arena rumbled to life as the ground shifted around and cracked open.
Both of them were going to die. It was just a matter of who would kill who, first.
“Roooaarrrr,” Jelly launched herself from her prone position. She bolted toward Mastazita and kicked herself from the floor, lifting into the air, prepared to take a final swipe at the beast.
He lifted his head as his eyes followed her trajectory.
Time slowed down to a near-halt.
Jelly spread her arms out and roared into his face as she descended upon him.
He clenched his fist and pulled his arm back, ready to stab her with his claw.
He opened his mouth as wide as he could and revealed his fangs.
“Yaaaarrggggghhhhh,” Jelly pulled her arm back and threw a devastating punch.
Mastazita moved his paw in front of his face in an attempt to block the attack.
Bad move.
Jelly wasn’t going for his face. She landed half a foot away from him and punched him in the cheek.
She yanked her paw away from his face and rammed them into his abdomen.
“Grooooooooo,” Mastazita wailed. His tongue flapped down his chin, allowing the pink spittle to fly against her face.
Jelly rammed her arm in further and grabbed his left shoulder with her free paw.
As she stood up straight, her right paw moved up with her, chewing through his innards.
“Gwuh,” Mastazita coughed out a rope of pink blood and felt his spine crack out.
She squeezed his shoulder with her left paw and forced his head forward.
“Ngggg,” she whined and revealed her fangs, pulling his head to the side of hers, “Ngggggg.”
Her right claw chewed up his body and arrived at something fleshy.
A little larger than the size as her paw.
“Whuh,” Mastazita lilted in her arm as she squeezed around the fleshy object.
Jelly buried her face into the crook of his neck. Floods of tears blasted around his shoulder and down his back.
She tugged at the thing inside his chest once, twice, three times - but the organ just wouldn’t budge.
“Nggg,” She pu
shed him forward, feeling the life drain from his body. He grew heavier in her arms the more she tried to pull her claw back.
“Whuuuu,” Mastzita felt his eyelids grew heavier.
“Nuuuuuuhhh,” Jelly squeezed the organ in her infinity claws, lifted her left leg, and placed her paw on his hip.
She leaned back with all her might and booted him away, tearing his still-beating heart out from his chest.
She kept her paw held up, imprisoning the beating organ within her infinity claws.
Mastazita slumped in her arms, dead. She kept him upright, with the side of her face pressed against his.
She stared through the light funneling from the gargantuan crack in the ground and tried to catch her breath.
Huff-huff-huff.
Mastazita’s corpse slid through her arms and dropped to the ground.
Jelly didn’t flinch nor blink. Her breathing slowed slightly as she stared into nothingness.
The beating organ in her claws slowed and slowed until…
…it stopped altogether.
Nothing but a useless mound of muscle that once powered her ultimate foe.
This time, however, the light didn’t burn anything.
The rocks blew apart in all directions. Jelly snapped out of her catatonic state. Mastazita’s heart softened in the prison of her infinity claws.
The howling wolves raced towards the arena from the horizon.
Jelly lifted her head to see the light headed straight for the core of Saturn. Blasting past its rings, the light throttled into the core.
Enceladus rocketed toward the light, magnetized by its ferocity.
The moon stretched out into an oblong and slipped into the stream, joining the magnificence…
The last of the beam of light rocketed towards Saturn. Her rings began to grind and gyrate, creating an intense grinding sound like that of a drill against concrete.
The rings revolved quicker, somehow inspired by the light that had funneled into Saturn’s core.
Jelly closed her eyes and clenched her claws together, keeping the heart in her talons.
Finally, she was at peace.
There she stood - victorious, but battered, bruised, cut and almost-disemboweled.
Jelly Anderson looked a mess, but she was still upright - which was more than could be said for Mastazita.
One hundred silver wolves crept along the ground toward her with great caution.
They stopped short of entering the light-filled arena.
Bolts of brilliant white light streaked into the sky and throttled the center of Saturn, powering it with an exposed energy source.
The wolves’ attention was drawn to the angry ringed planet directly above them, and they remained as a pack as best they could. Traversing the rocky terrain was uncomfortable.
One of them hung its tongue as it pushed through to the front of the pack. It made the mistake of looking dead ahead at the tiger fifty feet ahead of him.
The corpse of their dead God lay at her feet, preventing the wolves from moving forward.
Jelly opened her eyes and lowered her head. Her shadow cast over Mastazita’s corpse, eerily outlining just who was in charge, now.
Saturn’s rings spun faster, seemingly tearing sparks as it scratched across the vast blanket of space.
Jelly made eyes at the first wolf and scowled at it.
“Grrr,” Jelly whined, making damn sure they could see what was in her right paw.
The first wolf whined like a scaredy-cat and sat back on its hind legs. The ninety-nine others wanted a better view and fanned out around him, daring to tread closer.
But none dared tread too close.
Jelly moved her left foot back one step, followed by her right. She released Mastazita’s severed heart from her claws.
The organ splattered against the rocky ground.
Her feet traveled backwards until her right heel hit the side of something.
She kicked her hind leg against it to ensure its was strong enough to contain her weight.
The torn-out pilot’s seat from the grounded spacecraft.
Turning back, she saw that the wolves had spread out and left a twenty-foot, semi-circular clearing around the tiger creature that had killed their God. They tilted their heads up to take in the enormity of the battered and angry tiger standing before them.
Jelly sneered at them and revealed her fangs in the process. Bright white, razor sharp, much like her infinity claws.
She raised the first claw on her right paw and pointed at Saturn’s gyrating rings.
The wolves looked up and then back at Jelly, who lowered her arm and squinted at the pack.
Jelly stepped over to the pilot’s seat at the head of the arena. She spotted two figures in the distance.
Human-shaped figures.
Jelly squinted at them as they ran forward. She knew who they were.
“Jelly,” Alex’s voice came from the silhouetted pair. It was unclear which person was which until they got closer.
Grunt.
Alex ran into the shaft of light and slowed down on his approach behind the wolves.
They all turned to Alex and growled.
Jelly roared and caught their attention. She clenched her right paw into a fist and thumped her chest three times, “Friend.”
Alex couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Jelly, the little cat he’d heard about most of his adult life, stood at the center of the galaxy with everyone - human and animal - in the palm of her paw.
“Jelly?”
A beyond-battered Jaycee hobbled toward the Colosseum.
The skin on his face had been completely removed to reveal a badly damaged endoskull.
He caught sight of the tiger standing in front of the pilot’s seat, “Jelly?”
“Yeah, it’s her,” Alex said.
Jaycee’s electronic voice shifted up and down as he spoke. His voice box had evidently been destroyed in the attack back on the ship.
“Wh-wh-what happened? Is sh-she okay?”
Alex didn’t tear his gaze away from the tiger, “I, uh, don’t know?”
“What’s going on?” Jaycee asked as he looked into the sky, “What’s happening to Saturn?”
“I don’t know.”
Jelly screeched at the top of her lungs - she was in charge now.
Jaycee, Alex, and the wolves turned back to her to see her crouched to knees with her arms open.
Furie snaked through Alex’s legs and poked her head out for a good look. She bolted away and made a bee-line for her mother.
“Child,” Jelly grunted in her now-eerily masculine grunt. She waved Furie forward and beckoned her into her arms, “Mommy.”
“Miew.”
Furie ran past the last row of wolves and jumped into her mother’s arms.
Jelly scooped the kitten up in her arms. She stood up straight and lay her daughter along the length of her bloodied forearm and cradled her softly.
The light from Saturn and her spinning rings shone into the kitten’s face.
“My God,” Alex whispered just loud enough for Jaycee to hear.
Jaycee struggled with his voice, “You might not be wrong about that.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
Alex turned to face the tiger at her new throne, “Look at her.”
The wolves began to whine and cower as Saturn’s rings spun around faster and faster.
Jelly looked back at them and growled at the top of her lungs.
They knew who was boss, now. Humbled, they sat back in sheer reverence for the beast.
Jelly looked at Jaycee and Alex and growled at them.
“D-Does she want us to do the same thing?” Alex asked.
“I think so,” Jaycee got down on one knee and tugged on Alex’s sleeve. He felt across his jawline and was reminded of just how violent Jelly could be.
“Best not to piss her off.”
Alex dutifully followed his colleague and lowered himself to his knees.
Jelly sniffed around her daughter’s face. She took in a lungful of her scent and finally felt at peace with the world.
Furie pawed at her mother’s face, playfully, as Jelly sat into the pilot’s seat, which, from the angle Jaycee and Alex now had, resembled a ceramic throne.
Jelly held her daughter tight against her bare chest and relaxed into the chair.
“Wh-what do we do now?” Alex asked Jaycee.
“I don’t know,” Jaycee turned from Jelly to the angry planet above their heads, “I doubt we have much choice.”
Saturn’s rings spun in all directions.
A scary and frightening ball of power.
Any feelings of individuality, purpose, or control evaporated from Alex and Jaycee’s bodies.
Jelly’s mouthed widened, enacting a cheeky grin as she clapped eyes on them.
The wolves remained abated and sated.
Sitting before them in the pilot’s throne with her daughter was Jelly Anderson; the new head of the Colosseum, with her subjects - both human and non-human - knelt before her in complete and utter reverence.
The new Queen of Space.
And there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.
From the author - Andrew Mackay
Author notes from Star Cat 4: Killer Instinct (exclusive to the e-book version of this title)
Hey gang!
Phew. So, what did you make of all that?
Killer Instinct is my nineteenth full-length novel.
What struck me when finishing was just how far I’ve come as a writer. I think back to my first series (In Their Shoes) and consider just how different they are to my latest works. In many ways, of course, they’re still the same. Now that Star Cat is really up and running, I doubt I’ll ever loosen my grip on satire - at the very least, I’ll always have something to say about the state of the world and society, no matter the genre. If you’ve read my other works, you’ll know this is true.
And it isn’t abating in the slightest.
So, onto Killer Instinct.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall watching readers make their way through the book. I’m curious to see their reaction at certain points.
Star Cat: Killer Instinct Page 24
