For months now, off and on, Chip had been hard at work making his latest (and unquestionably to Chip, the greatest) creation: His (perhaps clumsily named) Catted Battle Drone.

It was fairly simple in concept: A hovering disc with mounted offensive and defensive capabilities, plus a spot for a very small cat to perch in and control the machine. At first, he’d wisely elected to remain outside the machine, leaving his controls on the ground and connected by wire. He had a few officers stop by and help him with managing it in the air (lifting, catching, tossing, and perhaps luckily not losing any appendages), but the control was all him.

Finally, though, he got the energy transducer working well enough that it didn’t spontaneously burst into flames anymore (that had happened… several times). It was drawing energy from the crystals and air in and around the Castle, and channeling it into the motors cleanly, so he was confident enough to move his controls into the center of the machine itself.

He’d ridden on many a human’s shoulders, as well as a not-really-human, and a definitely-not-human, so he was somewhat accustomed to ending up high in the air without a solid thing beneath him, but when he finally got the capacitors charged and the whole thing leaped into the air with him in it, it was definitely an entirely new feeling.

He giggled gleefully as he rose and fell at the touch of a paw, and started carefully testing the controls again (now with him in it, and no ejection device installed at all). Up, down, faster, slower, left, right, forward, back…combinations. Once he was satisfied that it all worked, he started carefully maneuvering around his (technically unofficial) workshop, slowly at first, but then gradually faster.

“It works!” he declared happily to the empty room, and laughed once more.

Then he landed the machine with a bit of a grinding thump (he definitely needed to work on that). There was the next step to consider, now! Field testing!

First, he’d do some basic testing in Nega HQ. If that went well, he’d go from there. There were always plenty of unsuspecting perfectly willing officers about who would happily help him test…though he fitted his machine with some real weak zappers that he’d cooked up a few days ago. No reason to actually hurt somebody who was obliging his desire for thorough testing, after all!

Wiring the rayguns (truthfully, just basic lasers with perhaps a bit more umph than strictly necessary) in took him a little while, as he’d already thought to have some wire hookups ready. They attached to the sides, so that they zapped wherever he was facing. It kind of ruined the aesthetic a bit, sticking out on the sides like that, but he was sure he could fix that problem with a few more accessories. No look was completely lost when you could just add more stuff!

Once it was all fitted, he hopped back in, and took to the air again. He zapped his lasers at a couple points in the room, and it worked passably well. He giggled gleefully again, and then went out into the halls of the castle.

(That, of course, required landing, getting out, opening the door, flying out, closing the door again…and then flying off. It was quite stylish.)