This takes place after the end of the second season.

Disclaimer – I own neither "Loonatics Unleashed" nor the characters. If you don't know what a hush puppy is, well, it is a delicious creation of fried bread. There is actually a literary reason for naming the story thus, but I shall let you find out in a different chapter.

XXXXX

"Identification recognized," the feminine metallic voice responded after it had scanned the identification card, received the special code, analyzed fingerprints and facial features, and evaluated a voice scan. "Proceed."

The metallic doors swished open, and the tall, chestnut-haired prison guard led Tech E. Coyote down one of the several halls of heavily guarded cells within the maximum security facility. The coyote barely noticed the different malicious faces that peered out at him from different openings. He ignored the taunts, and he hardly batted an eye at some of the comments from the individuals who recognized him. What did he care? He was not the one locked up.

They reached the end of the hall, and once again went through the process of scanning the guard—Ralph was his name—before the doors of the lift opened. They stepped on and proceeded downwards.

Tech stood silently as they passed level after level. He mentally went over his checklist of the tools he had brought for the routine check-up. There was no need to be anxious—it was not as if any of the prisoners would escape and throttle him while he was looking over the mechanisms of their cells. Yet there was a growing dread which he had to harden himself against—a dread which had nothing to do with protecting his person.

Ralph the guard cleared his throat, diverting the coyote's thoughts. "This is a big assignment, I guess," he began awkwardly, "especially if they called you in all the way from Blanc, Mr. Coyote."

"Not too big," Tech replied, turning his head. He felt his muscles twitch beneath his green and black mask, but he fought against that feeling within him. "I will probably be done in two hours," he added nonchalantly.

"Oh… Neat." The guard pushed up his glasses as if that would help him find something interesting to say.

Tech was not particularly interested in conversation, but the look of nervousness on Ralph's visage was so pathetic that he took pity on the guard. "Have you worked here very long?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," Ralph replied eagerly. "It's been about… eight years now. A lot of my family have been police officers and security guards," he added.

"That's certainly interesting," the coyote responded politely. He looked at the controls of the lift. Only three floors to go.

The lift slowed and halted, and the doors opened again. Tech and Ralph stepped out, and the guard led the Loonatic to the door of a cell. The controls scanned Ralph thoroughly before it permitted him access. Ralph entered first, but Tech had already seen what was in the cell. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and crossed the threshold.

The room itself had been made like all the other cells in the prison—but one wall had been knocked down to annex a second cell, and the extra door sealed off. Bunks, chains, and everything usually found in a cell had been removed. In the center of the cell, a large sphere sat in place—one half of its inners occupied by the generator. The generator itself was half a sphere, flat end facing up, and shielded by a nonmetallic platform. Covering most of the platform's surface were several waist-high stacks of books and reading materials.

A short woman sat upon one of the stacks, flipping through a book on wormholes. Black hair formed a semi-circle around most of her bald scalp, which concealed a cranium unusually enormous for a human woman. She did not look up as Tech and Ralph came in, and Tech was just as willingly to go unnoticed. He came to the controls of the miniature prison and started running scans on the system.

"Every dog has its day," the woman suddenly commented.

Tech checked the food dispensing mechanisms. Everything seemed to be in order.

"I've been instructed that you may not speak while Mr. Coyote is here, Mastermind," Ralph barked, his nervousness replaced by his professionalism. If Tech had not been making small talk with on the lift, he would not have recognized the two attitudes as belonging to the same person.

"You must have felt proud to have worked out so many problems in my underground prison," she continued in a sing-song voice, completely ignoring the guard. "It's just like a dog to bury everything he comes into contact with."

Energy level checked out. Now to look inside. Tech pulled out his screw driver and began to take off the plastic side of the control systems.

"Kind of like old times, huh, road-runner-breath?" Mastermind quipped. Tech refused to look at her, but she maintained her one-side conversation. "Remember when we used to work on your prototype of the containment facilities? Of course, you do. You remember your entire collection of little dog toys, don't you, Fido?"

She laughed, and her voice sounded almost wistful. "We had a quite a few close shaves. I thought we would have to resort to eating each other the first time we were trapped. I noticed that you drooled whenever you saw a bit of leg."

Tech slammed his screw driver back into its holder, and he attached a small flashlight to his eye guard, turned it on, and studied the wiring system.

"Aww, you don't remember that, do you? And I thought you were the sensitive one!"

Tech bit down the growl that threatened to erupt. He was not going to be a player in her little game.

She was not going to get to him.

XXXXX

"Now, you're sure this is not going us to fry to a crisp," Mallory Casey asked as her tutor flipped on the controls.

"Not unless you touch the energy field," Tech replied matter-of-factly.

They sat side by side in an abandoned room of Acme Tech Institute as the coyote adjusted the settings of the containment chamber—a short, dark-haired girl and a skinny grad student. Tech did a quick scan of the system. Everything seemed good, for now.

The brown-furred coyote pulled his goggles over his eyes and glanced at the young prodigy beside him. Her dark eyes were focused behind a pair of glasses as she studied the circular metallic "generator" which would soon make a prison. For the past few weeks he had been tutoring Mallory in various courses, and he had liked the results he was already getting. She was amazingly gifted—she could grasp quantum physics better than most juniors at the college as well as take apart various machines and put them together again. That was why he had asked her to help him test his prototype for a security facility.

He watched as she absent-mindedly pushed back a loose strand of hair that had fallen from her tight bun. She bit her purple-colored lip as she vainly tried to look in control.

He chuckled at her expression. "I'm more likely to get hurt than you, Mallory," he pointed out.

Mallory rolled her eyes and gave him a small smile. "Well, we don't want that either," she stated. "I would be very lonely without my favorite tutor."

Tech averted his eyes, finding the blinking green light of the controls unusually absorbing. "Well—ah, ah, that's what these tests are for—uh, to make sure no one gets hurt—uh, that is, make sure no one outside the chamber is hurt; the prisoner inside can get hurt—no, uh..."

Mallory laughed, and Tech quickly adjusted the controls. Immediately a blue energy field, like a half-spherical bubble, appeared over the platform that rested upon the "generator". The generator itself was six foot in diameter and produced a field tall enough for Tech to have stood in. Tech turned on the outer shield. Tech checked the readings a few times to make sure there were no instrument errors. He turned to Mallory with a grin. "So far, so good."

Mallory nodded and leaned in closer to study the readings, and Tech awkwardly scooted away, glad that her eyes were on the screen. "Energy field has not penetrated the shield. Temperature is stable," she read out aloud. She tapped the screen. "I guess there's nothing left to do but…"

"Yeah," Tech laughed nervously. Neither of them moved.

His instinct reminded him that he did not like pain, but he knew he could never show this invention to anyone if it could accidentally harm whoever inside it. Finally, he punched in the code, and the energy field dropped. "Here goes nothing."

Mallory cringed, but Tech could not keep his nerves while looking at her. He stood and walked swiftly to the middle of the platform of the generator. He paused a moment and quickly sat down, hugging his knees to his chest. "Proceed," he ordered.

Reluctantly, Mallory flipped on the energy field and looked at her watch. "Five seconds… Ten seconds…"

Tech had a fleeting thought of what this would do to his insurance premiums, but he quickly stamped it down. One minute… Two minutes… Five... Seven...

"Ten!" Mallory turned off the energy shield, and Tech sighed. "Are you cooked, Tech?"

"Not all," the coyote replied, forcing a smile. "Other than my insides, the temperature level has not seemed to have fluctuated."

"The data is encouraging," Mallory observed. A grin of relief betrayed her, and she jumped to her feet. "It worked, Tech!" she cried, leaping onto the platform.

What happened next Tech could not explain. Mallory might have bumped the controls when she raced to her tutor, or there might have been a glitch in the system. The coyote had barely time to react to Mallory's gesture of congratulations before they were surrounded by a blue translucent field of energy.

XXXXXX

Four hours later they were still waiting for the custodian to come by. They had already talked about the weather and how to control it, classes, schedules, computer programs, and several other topics. They had already played "Finish that Formula" and imaginary 3-D chess. If he had not been trapped inside a holding cell with no food or water to speak of, Tech might have said he was enjoying himself. He did not often find companions who enjoyed discussing subatomic particles, but Mallory Casey relished the topic. She even made several jokes about quarks, and he found them humorous. Their acquaintanceship had not previously revealed the fullness of her companionable side, but Tech found that he could almost ignore the thirst that was building up when she began talking about black holes.

Tech stretched his limbs and scratched his back through the orange fabric of his turtleneck, all the while wishing he had made the cell larger. Though the platform was six foot in diameter and had enough room for the two short companions, Tech and Mallory kept close together in the center. It was a familiarity they would not have ordinarily attempted, and Tech was glad he had taken a shower that morning.

As Mallory began telling him more about her life's work of amplification of brain waves, Tech played with his goggles and polished them for the umpteenth time. Mallory and he sat side-by-side, facing each other, and in their conversation they had accidentally fogged up the other's eye ware on several occasions. Mallory had long abandoned her glasses, but Tech preferred to wear his goggles at different points.

"So, tell me, Mallory," Tech began when she had paused for breath, "what interested you in creating a brain wave amplifier in the first place?"

Mallory crossed her ankles, and the happy gleam in her eyes dimmed. She sighed wistfully. "Well, Tech, you might think it's crazy--a lot people have told me I'm silly but… well …" She looked so uncomfortable that he began to wonder if this was a good subject after all. Mallory at last cleared her throat. "I've… I've always been told that I'm smart and that I would be a scientist or a world leader some day. Yet… well, my little brother was born without the luxury of being a child prodigy—in fact, he has special needs."

"I'm sorry," Tech answered immediately, slightly taken aback.

"Don't be," she replied with a skillful shrug, as if she was used to that response. "He's a very capable boy, no matter what they say," she added. A cloud covered her visage, but it vanished quickly. Mallory bit her lip and lowered her eyes.

"When we were little," she continued after a pause, "I always heard people say that he was different, and some of the kids we grew up around were always teasing him. I was always told that I was a prodigy, and I can remember wanting to be able to take some my brain power and knowledge and put it inside of him." She clasped her hands together, and Tech could see that they soon turned white. "Brain wave amplification, though, would probably be more effective, don't you think?" she asked quietly.

"No doubt about it," Tech replied, but he found himself nearly tongue-tied. He would not have thought of this complexity if one had asked him to describe Mallory that morning. She had always been a get-to-work individual in their tutoring sessions, and they had rarely talked of their lives outside of the institute. She was brilliant, of course, and she was amiable, but he had privately thought she was conceited whenever she had mentioned her plan of brain wave amplification in the past.

"Several inventors had noble causes when they made their contributions to society," he managed to say at last. "There's no reason for you to be different."

"You… you really think it's noble?" she squeaked, raising her head. Hope--and gratitude?--sparkled in her eyes.

Tech nodded; his own green eyes were serious. "Absolutely," he said. "You see a need, and you want to fix it. Edison would have applauded you."

Mallory beamed, and she lowered her eyes again. "Tech," she said slowly, "may I ask you a… silly question?"

Tech leaned forward. "The only silly questions are the unasked ones," he said kindly.

Mallory shyly twiddled her thumbs together. "Do you… do you like me—as a friend?"

Tech thought about it. He had a professional interest in her before, but it took four hours trapped inside a dangerous confinement chamber to reveal this side of her. It was almost as if he had found his intellectual equal--"almost," he added to himself. Still, he rather hoped that she could be like this whenever they were together. "I think I do," he said at last.

"I think of you as a friend, too."

Tech looked away, pretending to be interested in the ceiling. "Of course, you do. Anyone else would have been bored to tears by now."

"You're not boring at all!" Mallory protested, sounding genuinely astonished. "You're the only person ever to laugh at my beta decay joke."

"Really?" It was Tech's turn to be surprised. "But that was classic!"

"I'm glad you think so," she said quietly. She was silent for a moment or two, and then she shifted her weight and tucked her feet behind her. Mallory sat up straight upon her heels and looked him in the eye. "I have a confession to make, Tech," she said seriously. "When you told my professor that you would tutor me, well, I was hoping you would do it. I had already looked up what I could find about you after he suggested that you help me."

"I would have too," Tech replied, not sure he was following her. "You might have been working with a lunatic."

"Yes, that's true," she agreed. "But I… I wanted you to tutor me because—well, you're really smart."

"So I've heard a few hundred times," he answered, only half joking.

Mallory smiled. She rested her hands upon her bare knees, fingers gripping the hem of her short pants, and she tilted her head forward. He suddenly noticed how close she was to him, and he leaned back politely. "Well, Tech, I'm glad you think of me as your friend, but… but I want to be more than just a friend."

"I think the temperature levels are unstable," he said quickly. He grabbed the cuff of his turtleneck and began to fan himself. "Do you feel warm?"

Mallory blinked. "No," she said. She laid two fingers upon his snout. "Your nose is wet."

"So, it is," he laughed weakly, brushing her hand away. He tried to scoot away from her as inconspicuously as possible, but she merely inched closer to him.

Mallory folded her hands together. "Look, Tech, I know this is a lot to ask—and you probably already have one. I would be surprised if you didn't—a genius like you ought to have one."

"How long do you think we've been in here?" he asked. "I left my watch by the controls."

"Tech, would you let me finish?" Mallory's pale face pinked. "I'm nervous enough as it is."

Tech nodded and swallowed dryly. He glanced at the energy field, estimating his chances of breaking through without nuking all of his vital organs.

Mallory squared her small shoulders and raised her head. "You're not just a genius, but you're a nice guy as well. I'm going to risk looking like an utter fool. Well, Tech, I--I want to be your—your—" she faltered, but took a deep breath before blurting out, "I want to be your lab partner!"

"Mallory, ah, ah, I'm, uh…" He paused and blinked. He blinked again. "What was that?"

"I want to be your lab partner," she squeaked, less sure of herself.

Tech wrinkled his brow. "Mallory, we don't even have the same classes together. How could you work with me in the chem. Lab when you're--"

"I don't mean that kind of lab partner," she interrupted, waving the idea off. "I meant your personal lab time--when you work on your inventions."

Tech digested this, and he looked at her doubtfully. "You're just a little youn--well, maybe not, but…" He sighed. "Mallory, I'm flattered, really, but I just don't need a lab partner right now."

"But you know more about electricity and machinery than I do," she protested, leaning forward passionately. "And you're a lot smarter than I am--besides, I could help you. I can take notes better than most secretaries, and I can understand what you say better than most people, and--"

Tech raised his hand and silenced her. "Mallory," he said as friendlily as he could, "I'm flattered, but I don't need a lab partner or an assistant. I'm still trying to finish my senior thesis, you know."

Mallory sighed, and her shoulders slumped. She was silent for a long moment before she said, "I understand." She put on her glasses and turned her back to him, shamefaced.

Tech tried to find something to say, but he could not think of anything that would ease the awkward silence between them. He sighed after a moment and looked down at his green pant legs. "If… If it means that much to you, we… we could do a trial run for a week." An idea sparked within his mind. "And if you want, I could help you with your brain wave--oof!"

Tech was cut off as Mallory's thin body collided with his. Her arms wrapped around his neck as his back connected with the platform. "Oh, thank-you! You don't know how much this means to me!" she cried, squeezing him tightly.

"I can guess," he replied in a strangled voice. Beneath the weight of her body, Tech suddenly noticed that her hair smelled of honey and ginseng.

There then came a sound which Tech had already started to dread in the back of his mind. It was so clear and so sudden that, years later, Tech could recall it perfectly. It was a sound that often made him cringe when he recalled it.

"Ahem!"

The two companions looked toward the door, and they could see the uniformed figure of the institute's custodian. Even from the confinement chamber Tech could see his disapproving gaze. Tech's face grew hot under his fur as he and Mallory scrambled to their feet.

"You're here!" he exclaimed, stepping forward. "Mallory and I have been trapped in here for hours and we've been waiting for you to get here."

"I see you two weren't bored," the custodian replied.

Tech gulped. "Look, get us out of here, and I'll explain everything. You have to go to the--eeh!" He had started forward, hand gesturing towards the controls. Yet his right foot had fallen asleep and did not want to cooperate. Tech stumbled, hand-outreached, into the energy field.

XXXXX

"Remember how you zapped yourself in your own confinement chamber? You got quite a shock, but you weren't hospitalized. Such a pity." Mastermind heaved a sigh.

All the wires seemed to be working. He replaced the plastic side and started to return the screws.

"Are you leaving?" Mastermind asked, pretending to be hurt. "You haven't spoken a single thing to me, Fido. One would think you didn't like me."

He dropped one of the screws, and he quickly searched for it. He knew she was smirking, but he decided that he would not care.

"If you speak to me, I'll give you a biscuit, pooch," Mastermind cooed.

There it was! He inserted the screw into place and twisted it in. Soon the control pad was shut. Tech neatly gathered his tools, fixing his screwdriver into its proper position, and stood. He heard her move closer, but he turned his head without a glance at Mastermind.

"I'm ready to go," he told Ralph. Ralph nodded and opened the door, once again going through the several security procedures.

"Tech," she called after him, "how's Matty?"

The coyote stopped in his tracks and slowly turned. Mastermind was pressed against the sphere of her prison; her green-tinted eyes were filled with apprehension and a care that seemed genuine. Villain that she was, he could still find pity for her. "He was fine the last time I saw him," he said, shrugging. "I haven't been able to visit him much since I became a crime-fighter, but your step-cousins are taking care of him."

Mastermind's eyes fell. "I was afraid of that." She turned her back to him and slumped down to the floor of the platform. Her ponytail lay like a defeated snake upon the elevated rim of her cell. She was so downcasted, he was tempted to promise her that he would--"but no," Tech thought.

The door had opened, and Ralph had already stepped out first. Tech moved to follow.

"See you later, Hush Puppy."

He halted right in the center of the door. His blood boiled and froze in quick, alternating cycles, and his chest tightened. His pride screamed at him to whirl around and to tell her to shut up, that she wasn't funny, that she had to come up with better material to taunt him--anything. Yet his sense told him that she had received enough of a victory when he had stopped walking.

Tech stepped out of the doorway, and the metallic doors once again shut.

XXXXX

A/N: I would have loved to have left the first chapter there, but I felt I needed to add this note. Mallory might not be 100 percent in character during the past story, but I think that, considering we only see Mallory for a limited amount of time before she becomes Mastermind, my use of literary license is appropriate.

This is going somewhere, by-the-way.