Sylvester: Apex Predator, Part 1 (Patreon)

Hey folks! Here's Sylvester, using a few ACME products to finally strike fear in the hearts of widdle yellow birds everywhere- check out part 2 in September, and thanks for your support!

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Sylvester, Tom, and Wile E. Coyote walked into a bar, but they all felt like jokes today. Between the three of them were a litany of injuries and near-death experiences as long as their arms, with broken bones, burns, cuts, bruises, getting eaten, getting blown up, eviscerations, lacerations, decimations, and every other injury and form of grievous bodily harm imaginable.

“It’s dethpicable, I tell ya, dethpicable,” Sylvester moaned, the black and white cat nursing a bowl of milk. “That little twerp dropped a piano on me! I wasn’t even chasing him, I was just thunning myself!”

Tom and Wile exchanged looks. “Come now, Sylvester, we both know better,” the coyote drawled. “You were trying to eat the bird again.”

“Well I can’t help it! He just thits up there, mocking me, like the most thuculent morsel on the menu. And you’re one to talk- you’re after a bird too.”

“I am a wild animal,” Wile said stiffly. “It’s in my nature to chase the roadrunner.”

“And I’m trying to keep a pest from invading my home!” Tom said. “You’re the only one that keeps going after your owner’s other pet.”

“Really?” Sylvester scoffed. “So if Jerry was a fancy little pet mouse, you’d lay off of him, would ya?”

“Uh…” Tom couldn’t quite look his fellow cat in the eye. “Y-yeah, yeah, sure.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Tom,” Sylvester spat. “Bethides, Tweety’s a menace I tell ya, a menace!”

Wile and Tom exchanged looks and laughed. “Tweety?” Tom shook his head. “Sylvy, you don’t know how good you have it! Jerry, now- he’s a little menace. He’s a trespasser, and he starts going after me first, half the time. Do you know what it’s like to be bullied by a mouse?”

“Hmph. Both of you are painfully out of depth,” Wile said airily. “The roadrunner, now, he is a worthy foe.”

Sylvester waved it off. “Please, this is deprething me. Look at us- we’re supposed to be predators. And we get our teeth kicked in by a whittle baby bird, a mouse, and a… well, a bigger bird, sure, but still! They shouldn’t be our ‘worthy foes,’ they should be our lunch.”

Tom and Wile exchanged looks again, now slightly worried. “You mean… if you actually caught Tweety, you’d eat him? Like, for real?” Tom asked.

Sylvester thought about it for a moment. “Augh, I don’t know… I’d be thatified if I could just scare the feathers off the yellow twerp. It’s a matter of rethpect, you know?”

“Mhm, mhm.” Wile nodded. “The roadrunner and I used to have spirited debates- now he just… beeps at me.”

“Jerry walks all over me. It’s like he doesn’t even care that I’m a cat anymore!”

“Thee? That’s the thort of thing I’m talkin’ about! Fellas… we need to show our prey who’s bosth around here!”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Wile asked.

“Well, we get buff! Build ourthelves into real, apex predators.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “Okay, but how is that going to help? We’re already bigger and stronger than our prey.”

“I…” Sylvester stopped, deflating. He pondered the argument for a moment, and then scowled, shooting out of his seat. “Aw, shaddup! To heck with you naythayers! When I’m built like a Greek God and you two are still here whining, you’ll thee!” The cat left his two friends in a huff, and as soon as he was home- making certain Tweety was nowhere in sight, of course- he made a quick call to the ACME corporation.

Sylvester poked his head around the corner, nervously scoping out the gym. He swore under his breath; Hector was here. A brutish, burly bulldog, he was Sylvester’s next door neighbor, and had made a habit of punching his face in if he caught him messing with Tweety. The tomcat plastered himself against the wall as the hulking dog lumbered past.

“These better be worth their weight in gold,” Sylvester muttered, glancing down at two pills of ACME’s U-Gro supplements. He took another glance at Hector, and then grabbed two more. Gulping them down, Sylvester braced himself, until he felt like firecrackers were going off in his stomach. He sucked on his teeth, his tail curling as he glanced down at his body, and the cat suddenly wore a bracing smile- it was working. His muscles exploded in size, his arms pumping up in quick succession. Biceps bloomed into swollen balls of iron, his chest fluff suddenly wedged between two meaty slabs. His shoulders broadened, topping a back that turned into a vast gulf of black fur. Sylvester nearly swooned; it took a second for his legs to catch up, and they shook supporting so much new, dense weight. But soon, they too thickened, bolstering his height as his quadriceps rippled with a slight flex.

“Ha!” Sylvester curled one arm, his bicep jumping up in response. “That’s what I like to thee! Lookit me, I’m a regular hunk!” He swaggered into the gym, head held high. A dumbstruck Hector stared at him, the dog now dwarfed by the massive feline.

“Thtep aside, Fido!” Sylvester said, shoving Hector aside as he set up the bench press. “Don’t get in my way, and maybe I’ll thare some bulking tips with you!”

Meanwhile, back at home, Tweety had finally settled on his usual perch, but soon spotted something new in Sylvester’s bed. Hopping down, the little yellow bird spotted the pills. “Oh! I tawt the puddy tat was hiding something new…”