It was high time Janus pulled himself out of his bubble and see who if anyone worth talking to Dr. Doofenshmirtz had working for him.
That was what he had told himself, anyway. He had been a touch reclusive since Lee Industries had been bought up, he did admit. Doofenshmirtz had a very impressive genetics foundation of his own, after all, and entire legions of professionals. Scientists were usually reclusive, but surely, he had thought, some of them could provide some stimulating conversation.
He was rapidly reassessing that notion.
The individuals comprising the group known as 'LOVEMUFFIN' had to be some of the most socially inept, narcissistic imbeciles he had ever dealt with. Lee was all too aware of his sometimes hit-or-miss social skills, but at least he was capable of running a functional company. Compared to individuals like Rodney or 'Dr.' Diminutive, he was practically a social paragon. Despite an earnest attempt to ask them how their work was going, the group of rejects had acted extremely condescending, demanding to know what 'important' work he had been placed on lately.
Explaining the negotiations with Drakktech quite literally sent several of them into temper tantrums. One of them even set the garbage can on fire as they ranted and raved about how horrible of a boss Doofenshmirtz was, saying that their genius was wasted on 'minor projects even they couldn't screw up'. After enduring fifteen minutes of this nonsense, Janus decided to cut his losses and leave. For the first time in a while, he came out of a conversation with something almost resembling pity for his fellow man. How any one individual could reach that level of social ineptitude was a riddle for the ages; he didn't even want to imagine what could have driven an entire group to such extremes.
Then again, it wasn't as if the average member of the public was much better. With his continuing misanthropy bubbling to the surface again, Janus considered calling this whole misadventure off, getting a cup of coffee from his boss' excellent dispensers, and returning to his lab. But no, there was one man on the Doctor's payroll who was apparently behind the Doctor's genetic advances. One man for whom he still held out hope of a stimulating conversation. He could bear that much.
Dr. Jumba Jookiba. A strange name. Foreign, most likely, but not any language or tradition Janus could recall. The man worked out of an odd modern art installation, looking halfway between a starship and a manta ray. The mind almost fancied it could lift off and fly away into the sky if it wished to. The building was restricted to the general public, but Janus could enter without issue.
Jumba was… not what Janus had expected. The rumors of him being some sort of Super or mutant were widespread, of course, but the massive, blubbery purple bulk hunched over an oddly shaped work table was far more than he had been prepared to see. He wondered what could have done this to the poor man.
Janus realized he had been staring at the man's back for what was most likely an unreasonable amount of time. He cleared his throat.
"Ahem."
"Eh?" The figure in front of him asked, slowly turning around.
Four eyes. He thought to himself, and then, in a rare moment of whimsy, how ironic.
"Mr… Jookiba, I presume?"
"Yeeeees, who is to be interrupting my very important science?" Jumba asked in an unidentifiable accent.
"Hello. I'm Dr. Janus Lee, I work for Doofenshmirtz as part of a subsidiary."
Jumba grunted. "And what are you to be coming here for?"
"I… understand you're something of a geneticist?"
Jumba stared at the man for a few seconds, and then broke into overwhelming guffaws.
"Ohohohoho! My ignorant friend, you are looking at the greatest master of genetic science in known galaxy!"
Janus' spirits dipped. So this was another blowhard then.
"What, you don't believe me? Come here come here, I vill be showing you."
Stretching his doughy arm around the man, Jumba led Janus to the center of his strange, overwhelming lab. Many of the devices were known to Janus- that was definitely a centrifuge, albeit suspended upside down from the ceiling, and those were test tubes, albeit suspended in some sort of magnetic holster, but many of the objects around the room seemed to have no clear purpose he could comprehend.
"Bossman is asking me to be collating my results on superhuman genome for wider use. You will be good practice for seeing if it can to be understood by non-genius mind. And also if I am conjugating 'polymerizations' korrektly."
Janus glanced over the data files Jumba had prepared, expecting to see more pointlessness and puffery. Instead, to his own shock, he found research decades beyond his own. The Super genome expressions in… of course!
"This is… astonishing!"
"HA-HA! What am I telling you?
"This will push humanity ahead by decades! Except I…" Janus pointed to one line of the script. "I think you might have made an error, there."
"Eh?" Jumba asked, scrutinizing the thesis carefully. Then, he slapped his head. "Oh! I am writing amino glu for gln!" The scientist quickly updated his work. "Say, maybe you are knowing your stuff."
"It… has always been a dream of mine to improve upon the imperfect nature of humanity."
Jumba slapped Janus on the back. "Now that I can get behind. Say, why don't you help me out here? I am preparing serum that should be capable of inducing genetic mutation in suitable genome as soon as it is done."
"You've finished testing?" Janus asked, surprised.
"Baaaaaaaah." Jumba groaned. "Such dull 'safety measures', peh. But fine. I am supposing I can be doing some animal testing first. Just needing to find animal."
A bald pink and purple cat, by sheer, improbable chance, wandered past the open door.
A moment later, Kat paused as he felt a shadow fall over him. He looked up.
Jumba and Janus smiled.
---
Things were beginning to look up for Kat.
Not only had his plans for the last few months gone off without a hitch, but the pharmacist's feeble attempts to investigate were going absolutely nowhere. The white-haired idiot hadn't known the first thing about spying and actually did more to help than he ever could have hoped for.
When he got snatched by the Kweltikwan he had planned to escape at the first opportunity given, right up until the human geneticist started talking about methylation in a way that suggested he actually knew what he was talking about. Kat's interest was piqued, and he figured the least he could do was spend a couple hours listening in on the duo.
By the time they finally took a break for coffee, Kat's mind was already racing with the possibilities. By sheer happenstance he had come across two of the beings on the planet who seemed to know what they were doing and had the means to give him something extremely useful. Thankfully the Kweltikwan hadn't recognized his species and the human didn't think anything was amiss.
The prospect of giving cats superpowers was a fascinating one. The local cartel preferred to keep things small, never really stepping into the human side of crime aside from the odd raid on a pet store. On top of it all, the human underworld had been essentially barren for the last year or so, leaving an incredible power vacuum that was just crying out to be exploited. There were some very powerful cats out to the west who would relish the opportunity for some fresh territory and pay through the nose for the superpowers with which to claim it. It was in the nature of a cat to dream big; now he had the means to hitch their dreams to his.
Yes, things were definitely looking up. For an opportunity such as this he could put up with spending a few months in a cage and enduring whatever humiliating lab tests they subjected him to.
---
Janus could scarcely believe where the time went. He had wandered into Jumba's lab on a whim a couple months ago, not expecting anything more than an awkward conversation and a mental pat on the back for trying to interact with people a little more, but here he was, working on one of his true passions! The alien geneticist had proven to be absolutely brilliant and a far better conversationalist than he had expected. What did it say about people when he had more in common with a four-eyed pudgy alien than most of his human coworkers?
Yes, alien! Jumba had been coy about it for a while, but there were some things that just could not stay secret between coworkers, especially with Pleakly's tendency to barge in unannounced and already halfway through whatever conversation he intended to have. So the doctor had discovered true extraterrestrial life, and with it the means to lift humanity to a new golden age. More importantly, that seemed, slowly but surely, to be what he was doing.
Needless to say, Janus was a lot happier with his job description than he was a few weeks ago.
Now, after a handful of trials (Lee had never met anyone laxer around safety standards than he was), the serum had been altered to, hopefully, work on cats.
Their chosen specimen was waiting inside its cage, where it did little but sleep and lazily watch their goings on.
---
Kat frowned.
The two scientists were far more attentive than he had originally thought. He was expecting a few sleepless interns who had been overworked and underpaid, but no. He had to be in the same room with what might have been the two most intelligent people in the area.
That meant he was going to have to put effort into this next part.
Damn it.
When the Kweltikwan grabbed him from his cage and studied him closely for a second, Kat was prepared for the jig to be up, but fortunately he moved on without so much as a second glance. The scientists rambled excitedly to one another as Kat ran through a list of everything he knew about the serum. An intramuscular injection as opposed to an intravenous one. That… complicated things.
He knew he had to be precise with his shapeshifting, given that his skin was tough enough to shrug off glancing blows from artillery. Create a small subcutaneous pocket around the injection site, keep the precious liquid isolated from the rest of his body, and throw up a protein mesh just fine enough to simulate pushing the needle through the skin.
The human withdrew the needle, looking positively gleeful. The Kweltikwan had a smug, self-satisfied look on his face.
"If calculations are correct, it should be matter of moments before retroviruses rewrite DNA completely!
"That's inconceivable!" Janus replied.
"Thank you."
Feeling like something was expected of him, Kat began twitching, yowling, and generally writhing around, keeping an eye on Jumba to make sure he was going through the motions.
"MUAHAHAHAHAHA, Yes, it is working!"
Kat took that as a go ahead.
"Now! Let us see. Cat should now be bulletproof-"
An entire magazine was emptied into Kat with no effect.
"Have superior strength-"
A yellow punch buggy dropped down onto Kat, who tossed it to the side.
"Laser eyes-"
Kat blasted a tossed shuttlecock out of the air.
"That's a new feature; and also ice breath."
Kat paused. That was not actually something his alien masters had enabled him to do.
"Mrow?"
Jumba looked at Kat for a moment. He sneezed.
"...oh well. Am not to be winning them all. ¾ is passing grade!"
Jumba moved over to the bank of monitors, striking several keys with fiendish glee.
"Product is ready and tested. Now, this machine will make mountains of serum at bossman's command! Excellent morning's work, eh? Let us be knocking off early."
As Jumba and Janus left, Kat sliced open his plasglass containment tube with ease. He gazed over the still glowing keys of the Kweltaquanian's computer.
He smiled like the cat who caught the canary.
---
Candace Flynn was not happy.
Being grounded for the last several months was a significant contribution to her displeasure. Not only had her mom not let up on the grounding, but that maniac Doofenshmirtz took advantage of the Resistance's absence to further his grip on the city! The Grid was trending with the incident over in New York, where that evil witch girl, 'Lord Feldrake', set hundreds of monsters on fire!
Okay, it was objectively a good thing that the villain had helped to save the city against a hoard of monsters, but that wasn't the point! The point was that Doofenshmirtz was growing more powerful every day, and her mom refused to listen to her!
Candace sighed, stomping down into the basement to finish a load of laundry. Maybe, if she did it without complaining too much, her mom would let up a little and let her go-
Wait.
Why was the cat there?
She watched as the hideous purple abomination grinned wickedly, picked up a test tube, and… poured… something… out of its ear.
Candace blinked.
Kat grinned.
"MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM! KAT IS EVIL, I KNEW IT, AND I HAVE PROOF THIS TIME! HE'S POURING POISON OUT OF HIS EAR, AND-"
"Candace! ...wait. Isn't it pouring poison into other people's ears?"
"No! I mean yes, but this isn't a metaphor! ...probably."
"Candace. Kat is not attempting to recreate Hamlet. You've been watching too many daytime soaps."
"But mom! That's all I can do ever since you grounded me!"
"Don't talk back, young lady. You'll get your privileges back when you stop plotting the downfall of the city government."
"They're compromised, I know it!"
---
Ten minutes and a scheduled psych appointment later, Candace slunk outside with the trash bags in tow. She knew what she had seen! Why wouldn't her mother ever believe her? The creepy creature didn't even have the excuse of being protected by the Mysterious Force!
She shot a glare at the felonious feline as it snuck off past the bushes, around the fence, and…
Huh. That was weird.
There were a lot of cats in Danville nowadays.
---
Janus Lee has made a friend in Jumba Jookiba! His loyalty has increased considerably! New personal actions unlocked! Janus has written LOVEMUFFIN off as a lost cause and will refuse to interact with them any further!
Janus Lee's preference revealed: Misanthrope! Janus has some strong feelings on his fellow man, and while he keeps them in check when in public, they still shape his actions!
Something is stirring in the background.