For Better or For Worse
Part 1

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Somewhere Over the Pacific Ocean
May 1938
Night

It was a dark and stormy night. The headlights belonging to one of Shere Khan’s plum and taupe cargo planes lit up a small patch of the pitch-black sky as it cruised towards Cape Suzette. The turbulent ocean waves below and angry, rolling thunderclouds above were visible only when a fierce bolt of lightning crackled across the sky. Tempestuous gusts tossed the seaplane around as easily as children tossing a ball.

Manning this craft was one of Khan’s most seasoned pilots - a middle-aged grey panther known as Captain James Spaulding. He wore the uniform typical of all Khan pilots - a grey flight jacket with a gold, encircled ‘SK’ insignia on the shoulder over a white shirt, grey necktie, and matching grey bad weather didn’t faze Captain Spaulding; he’d been through worse. Even so, he wanted to get out of it as soon as possible.

Repeatedly wiping condensation from the windshield, he strained his eyes in an attempt to peer through the blinding rain. According to his instruments, the rugged cliffs surrounding Cape Suzette should have been visible, but all his tired eyes could see was darkness.

Then, if things weren’t bad enough, he heard a snap, crackle, and a loud POP! To his astonishment, the port engine burst into flames, causing the plane to jerk violently to the right.

Spaulding simultaneously leveled the plane out while quickly cutting the fuel to the port engine to put out the fire. The flames hissed when the raindrops hit them, but were not quenched.

The pilot fumbled for the radio. Watching the blaze spurting from the engine as he struggled to keep his plane aloft, he pushed the ‘transmit’ button, saying urgently, “Mayday! Mayday! This is flight 243 calling. I’m experiencing major engine malfunction! Mayday!”

For a long minute, the radio was silent. He wondered if anyone had heard him. It was two o’clock in the morning, after all.

“Mayday! Please! Mayday!”

Through the static caused by the storm, a heavily accented voice answered. “Hallo, O Troubled One. What are your coordinations?”

“Don Karnage?” Spaulding murmured incredulously.

The pirate captain said grandly, “Yes, it is the one and only superiferous me. Give me your locations, and we will save you.”

“Saveme?” Spaulding remembered his last run-in with Karnage’s gang. His plane had been blasted to smithereens and he had spent a day trekking through the Sierra Padre Mountains. “Ha! Not on your life, you sleazy thief!”

“Oh, you flatterer, you.” Unconcernedly, Karnage said, “Okay. Fine. Crash and smash into a ka-jillion, million pieces. I was just offering my handsome assistance.”

“I don’t need your kind of assistance, Don Karnage!”

As if his plane wanted to make a liar out of him, the cockpit lights and headlights completely went out, leaving him in total darkness. Without lights and with only one engine, there was no way that he could make it through the storm. His heart began to thump loudly and his palms became damp. Clutching the steering yoke in a stranglehold, Spaulding peered outside at the storm just as a bolt of lightning crackled precariously close. He knew that the ocean would be less than merciful tonight. Unless he was lucky enough to land on - or close to - an island, certain death awaited him out there.

He didn’t feel that lucky.

Seeing no other viable option, Spaulding pressed the ‘transmit’ button again with trembling fingers. He gave out his coordinates reluctantly.

“Excellamundo. I knew you were smarter than you sounded. We will be upon you in precisely...five minutos. Jolly Roger willikers, under and over.”

The pilot donned his parachute and slipped his handgun in his jacket pocket. One couldn’t trust air pirates. The friendliness was likely just a ruse to capture him and his cargo. But what other choice did he have?

A moment later, a few faint pinpoints of light were visible through the storm. Fighting to keep his plane under control, Spaulding once again wiped condensation from the windshield and watched as the lights grew closer. When a lightning sheet illuminated the dark sky, he could see that the lights belonged to five CT-37s.

The single-man, tri-wing airplanes circled and got into formation around Khan’s plane - two on either side, two above, and one behind. All lassoed the troubled plane’s wings and tail section with grappling hooks to steady it between them. A lanky ferret with his droopy mustache blowing wildly in the wind crawled hand over hand down the rope to the cockpit door.

“Open the door!” Mad Dog yelled over the roar of the wind, engine, and fire.

Too surprised to do anything else, the panther pilot unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the cockpit door. At the same time that a sheet of warm rain unexpectedly smacked him in the face, the airplane jerked to the left. Spaulding was promptly thrown out the plane, doing a belly-flop ten thousand feet towards the ocean.

“Amateur,” Mad Dog scoffed, climbing the rain-drenched rope back to his plane.

Before he could pull the parachute’s ripcord, Spaulding landed with a jarring bump on the wing of a CT-37. With the rain lashing at his face and the wind trying to blow him away, his fingers struggled to grasp the slippery surface of the wing as the plane zipped along.

His fingertips were barely clinging to the end of the aileron when Hal, a rotund orange feline, pulled him into the cockpit, shouting over the storm, “Welcome aboard!”

“Yeah, uh, thanks,” mumbled the dazed Spaulding. He blinked furiously as wind and rain whipped into his face. Feeling extremely uncomfortable and more than a little confused about the whole unreal situation, he tried to make himself as small as possible as he sat, crowded, beside the pirate on the seat. Just to make sure that he was really beingrescued by Don Karnage’s gang of air pirates, he pinched himself.

He knew he wasn’t dreaming when Khan’s cargo plane zoomed past them, the port engine engulfed in flames, and disappeared into the storm.

Spaulding gasped as the CT-37 he was traveling in was swallowed by the gigantic ‘mouth’ of the Iron Vulture. He’d heard stories of this magnificent ship of the air from the few pilots that had been lucky enough to escape Karnage’s wrath, but nothing could have prepared him for this.

When the five CT-37s’ engines stopped, the leader of the air pirates, Don Karnage, swaggered over to the planes. The rugged brown wolf’s attire consisted of a blue coat trimmed with brass buttons, grey trousers, and black boots. A scabbard hung at his side. He called out, “Hallo, disdressed pilot! Why do you not come down and thank your exceedingly heroic rescuers?”

“Yeah, last stop, everyone out. This means you!” Hal dumped his passenger roughly out of the plane. Spaulding landed in a soggy heap on the floor.

“Pick him up and apologize at once, you simpering simpleton!” Karnage ordered. He backhanded Hal repeatedly across the cheek. WHACK! “Remember that it is nice,” WHACK! “to be nice,” WHACK! “to the nice!” WHACK!

“Uh, sorry,” Hal said quickly, yanking Spaulding to his feet by the back of his jacket.

Sopping wet, Spaulding, whose head was reeling with confusion and pain, put his hands in the air. His frightened eyes flitted around at the dozen smiling, and a few yawning, pirates.

“Welcome to the hospitalness of the Iron Vulture,” Karnage said with a sweeping bow. He then pumped Spaulding’s hand enthusiastically.

“Simply hi,” Mad Dog said, wringing water out of his blue vest.

“Vould you care to join us in a late-night snack?” Dumptruck asked politely in a Norwegian accent. The hulking grey canine held out a plate of unappetizing brown lumps covered with grey sauce.

Dumbfounded, Spaulding nodded. He slipped his right hand into his pocket. His fingers clenched the revolver’s handle. Friendly behavior or no, he still didn’t trust Don Karnage and his notorious gang of air pirates. Dripping with water, he squish-squashed through the hangar, following the pirates towards their dining hall.

Downtown Cape Suzette
One Month Later
Friday

It was a typical summer day in the coastal city of Cape Suzette. The sun shone brightly in the wind-winnowed aquamarine sky. A group of laughing children enjoying summer vacation rode their bicycles past innumerable skyscrapers down the busy sidewalks, much to the dismay of one pedestrian.

“Whoa!” Mayor Tuskany, a portly brown walrus wearing a grey suit and a grey derby, cried as he dodged right and left to avoid being hit by the bicycles. “Look out, you little hooligans!”

After having his foot run over by the last bicycle in the caravan, he, hopping up and down in pain, said indignantly, “There ought to be a law against that! Sidewalks are for walking, not bicycling. Hence, the term sidewalks. I’ll have to bring it up in the next city council meeting.” Limping slightly, he hurried along to his destination - Khan Towers - while mumbling under his breath about the health hazards of bicycles.

“Extra! Extra!” shouted a chubby, freckled porcine paperboy in a red and black striped shirt as he waved the latest edition of the Cape Suzette Tribune. “Don Karnage saves another cargo transport! Air pirates huge heroes!”

“Boy, I’ll take one of those.” Tuskany purchased a newspaper. Reading the article underneath the headline, he asked rhetorically, “What’s this city coming to? Children trying to kill me! Pirates saving people!”

“Beats me, mister,” the paperboy replied, reaching into his bag for another newspaper. “I don’t write this stuff. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”

Muttering to

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