Community Pool Theater (4)

Kat arrived at Maria’s shortly after noon, wearing a white sundress with spaghetti straps. A straw hat adorned her head, shading her eyes. “You said to get here after lunch,” she said.

“We just finished having lunch,” Maria said as she snapped the aviator glasses off Marco’s face.

“Hey!” he yelled. “I needed those for the look I was going for!”

“Those belong to dad.”

“So? He let me wear em before!” Marco argued.

Maria folded them up and slipped them into her purse. “Did you ask permission to wear them for this?”

“He would’ve said it was alright!”

Maria furrowed her brows. She then closed her parasol.

Marco took the hint. “Whatever,” he said, kicking the dirt before turning his attention back to Kat. He held open his arms with a devilish smile. “Welcome... to Heck!”

All of Maria’s siblings were gathered around a small plastic kiddie pool, dressed in the same swimsuits from the day before. Maria, on the other hand, was wearing one of her usual dark-colored lolita dresses, as she didn’t intend on getting wet that afternoon.

Along with the kiddie pool were several buckets, enough water guns to arm a small militia, and a cooler filled with a rainbow assortment of water balloons on the verge of bursting.

Marco stood before the kiddie pool and crossed his arms with a smirk. “Are you prepared to face the most difficult day of your life?”

Kat looked at numerous weapons, all of them specifically to be used on her. She too smirked. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Grabbing the hem of her dress, she flung it and her straw hat off her body, tossing them into the wind. Clasped tightly to her form was a black crop top bikini.

Marco grinned as the rest of the siblings looked at Kat in amazement. Carlos especially so.

“Try to be careful and not injure yourselves,” Maria said, walking over to Kat’s clothes and picking them up for her.

“Relaaax! We’ll be fine,” Marco assured her. “Kat, however. That’s a different story.”

Kat cracked her neck as she rolled her shoulders to limber up. “Do your worst,” she said.

Gabriel and Gabriella walked over to Kat and stood to either side of her, carrying a water pistol each. “This way, prisoner,” they said, leading Kat ten feet to the kiddie pool.

“Let’s get a look to see what we’re dealing with,” Marco said. “First, I want you to get into the pool. Take your time. No rush.”

Kat looked down at the kiddie pool below her. The glistening water sat quietly within its confines, undisturbed. Cartoon fish were printed along the edges and interior with happy expressions, but Kat could only imagine them to be mocking her.

She took a deep breath and knelt down at the edge of the pool, staring intently at the water. Her eyes studied it, taking note of its wetness factor. A hand stretched cautiously over the water. It shook with hesitation before returning to her.

“Okay,” she said, finding the courage to go through with her ordeal. “Let’s do this. Hiyaah!”

Her hand shot outward like a bullet to the water. The tip of her fingers broke the surface tension of the pool with a tiny ripple, then retreated. All the fur on her body stood on end as a shiver ran down her spine. Her fingers were wet.

After taking a rest, she struck the water again. A cute little meow escaped her lips unconsciously. Each time the water took a beating, her body would tense up, only to ease a moment later.

She struck it again, with the process repeating. Then again. And again.

“Hmph! This is a piece of cake,” Kat said, amazed by her courageous effort.

Marco grew bored watching Kat’s relentless attack against the surface of the water. He looked at the twins, who stood behind Kat, and did a quick tilt of his head.

The twins nodded in acknowledgment and shoved Kat into the kiddie pool with all their might.

Kat fell face-first into the pool. Water went up her nose as she let out a yelp. She scrambled to get out of the pool as Maria’s siblings laughed, sans Maria and Carlos.

After some effort, she managed to pull herself out of the pool and roll onto the ground. She got up and shook her fur, flinging water onto all the siblings. With a death glare, she turned to the pair that almost sent her to a watery grave. “Why you…”

The twins quickly fled, with Kat chasing close behind. They fired their water pistols to get her to back down, but Kat easily dodged their shots and pounced them, sending them to the ground. Everyone laughed at the spectacle.

After apologies were given, they went back to training.

The next act of training was to shove Kat into the kiddie pool, albeit this time giving her a warning ahead of time as to expect it.

“It’s like that trust game,” Marco said. “You put all your trust in the person behind you, they grab you so you don’t fall, and now you have perfect trust for them. Except in this case it’s a bunch of water. Same logic.”

Maria raised an eyebrow at the logic, but Kat seemed to be into it, and everyone seemed to be having fun with all this, so she kept to herself.

“Makes sense,” Kat said, turning her back to the kiddie pool. She stretched her arms out, ready to have her entire body be embraced by the water. To have its mitts touch every fiber of fur. To find its way into every nook and cranny. Every pore. Completely engulf her in a watery grave.

“Wait wait wait!” Kat said, holding her arms up just as the twins were about to push her in. “Give me a sec.”

The twins waited for Kat to perform a breathing exercise as she pumped herself up.

Kat shut her eyes as tight as possible. “Okay! Do it!”

Gabriel and Gabriella each grabbed a shoulder and pushed Kat backward into the pool.

Kat felt the world escape her as she fell backward. She was in darkness as her body became weightless. The wind from the fall made her damp fur cold. Water was sure to reach her at any moment. Its cold grasp rubbing itself through her backside as she crashes into the pool.

Any second now, I will be consumed, Kat thought.

Time felt like it slowed to an absolute crawl to her. Over and over again she thought surely she should be hitting the water, yet it still hadn’t managed to capture her in its clutches. Did she somehow fall into some sort of slipstream? Was she now traveling to another world, where she would live out the remaining days of her life as some sort of warrior, destined to fight an evil demon lord? Or perhaps she had mastered flight, and she was actually flying high into the sky at that moment? Maybe she obtained teleportation powers and was actually free-falling in the sky. Ludwig always did seem to teleport from out of nowhere whenever she went to feed him.

Maybe cats really do have teleportation powers! She thought. Had I discovered some secret about the feline race that had been hidden from humanity since ancient times?!

Of course, this was just her mind running wild. The length of time all this occurred was the span of a second before the tip of her tail touched the water.

“MEOW!” she cried. Her eyes shot open. She reached out and grabbed the edges of the kiddie pool with her hands and feet, locking them into place with her extended claws. Her stomach pushed upward as she took advantage of an instant adrenaline rush to keep her body out of the water.

“Holy crap!” the twins yelled in unison.

The siblings and Maria clapped at the amazing acrobats that Kat demonstrated.

“Don’t just stand there!” Kat yelled, her arms and legs wavering with struggle. “Help me!”

“Okay!” Marco said. He ran up to Kat and began pressing her stomach downward.

“No!!! What are you doing?!” Kat hissed.

“Trying to get you into the water!” Marco shouted.

“But I don’t want to go into the water!”

“That’s the whole reason we’re doing this!”

Kat rapidly shook her head back and forth, going “No! No! No! No! Noooo!!!”

“Help me out, guys!” Marco yelled, turning to his brothers and sisters.

They looked at each other, unsure of what to do.

“What’re you waiting for?!” Kat cried. “My arms can’t take it!”

With that, the siblings quickly came to Marco’s aid and tried to force Kat into the pool.

“You little punks!” Kat hissed.

Marco stepped into the pool, putting more of his weight onto Kat’s stomach to force her down. “Get in!!!”

Kat screamed. “Never!”

Inch by inch, Kat’s body got closer to the water. The siblings jumped onto Kat in a massive dogpile, hoping she didn’t have the strength to hold them all up.

Maria watched the bizarre sight of Kat managing to hold the combined weight of her siblings. “I never knew she had this kind of strength in her.”

While Kat had the strength and resolve to keep going through sheer willpower, the kiddie pool did not. In the places Kat had forced her claws into the plastic, it began to crack. Suddenly, the plastic pool fell apart, sending everyone crashing to the ground as the water escaped to the surrounding grass.

Maria quickly ran up to the group. “Are you all okay?!”

There were moans of “yeah”s and “uh-huh”s. One person, however, was eerily silent.

“Kat?” Maria asked.

The siblings quickly got off Kat and backed away as they sensed a tense aura emanating from her.

Kat sat up. Her wet fur hung over her eyes. “You tried to kill me,” she murmured, scratching the broken kiddie pool with the claws from her hand. “You little demons seriously tried to kill me…” She stood up, her body leaning forward unnaturally. Water dripped off her fur as her tail swayed back and forth.

Maria’s siblings watched on in fear as Kat shook the water off her body.

She looked down at them, her eyes glowing with hatred. “Now it’s my turn to try and kill you!” she shouted, unleashing her claws.

All the kids scrambled as Kat leaped at them in an effort to pounce their minuscule bodies.

“Quick! The guns!” Marco yelled, picking up a water gun.

They did as told, and soon everyone was packing heat, aiming their sights on the furry demon that cackled before them.

“You think those little toys will stop meeeeee!!!” she shrieked like a banshee.

Veronica fired the first shot, but her aim was terrible and missed.

Kat picked her as her first victim and laid it on her by bonking the top of Veronica’s head.

“Ack!” Veronica collapsed, dead.

All the siblings began firing their water guns at Kat, who dodged them with ease. She violently bonked the siblings one after another on the head until there was only her and Marco left standing.

“We were only trying to help you, Kat!” he shouted.

Kat held up her claws. “You went too far!”

The two charged at one another, yelling at the top of their lungs. Marco fired his gun, only for Kat to dodge. Darnit! He cursed, as Kat brought down her fist onto the top of his head.

Bonk!

Maria’s siblings had all perished. Kat stood above their lifeless corpses, breathing heavily. Her fur dripped with water as her hands fell to her side.

“Why did it have to end with bloodshed?” she said, looking up at the sun. “Why did things have to go this way?” She clenched her fists and fell to her knees, then pounded the muddy ground. “Whyyy!”

Splash!

A water balloon flew into the air and hit Marco in the chest, exploding on impact.

Kat looked in confusion, turning to where the balloon came from. She found Maria standing next to the water cooler of water balloons.

“If we go by the logic of water being harmful to you, Kat, that should mean water should be good to everyone else, right?” she smiled.

“Huh?”

Marco jumped to his feet, brandishing his water gun. “Water balloons are extra lives!” he yelled, making up the rules as he went along.

Kat lowered her shoulders in despair. “Whaaaaat? Why do you guys get extra lives and I don’t?”

“Because you’re the boss! And we gotta take you down!” Marco said as a matter of fact. He ran over to the cooler and threw a water balloon at all his downed siblings. Once dosed in the life-restoring water, they got to their feet and regrouped, aiming their weapons at Kat.

Kat looked on in disbelief, only to erupt in laughter shortly after. “In that case, I’m not gonna go easy on you guys anymore,” she said with an evil smile, extending her claws before her face.

For the rest of the afternoon, they continued their game as Maria laughed from the sidelines. They tumbled and crashed in the mud, firing their water guns at Kat, who would in turn dodge and bonk them in the head with her hands.

That evening, with everyone covered in mud, they had a barbecue, feasting on hotdogs and hamburgers, retelling stories from “the war”.

When Kat returned home that night, her mom was shocked by the amount of mud covering Kat. She forced her to clean off outside with the hose before allowing Kat inside. It took a while, but Kat managed to wash away all the mud and dry off, where she told her mom about the fun day she had with everyone.

From then on, every morning she spent at least half an hour drenching herself behind the shop with the hose, slowly acclimating herself with being soaked. She aimed to be able to return to the pool midway through summer vacation.