Rex Shard
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| Rex Shard | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Vehicle | N/A |
| Color | Grey (As normal cat) Green (Crystal) |
| Hair | Grey (As Normal cat) None (Crystal) |
| Eyes | Brown (As normal cat) Yellow (Crystal) |
| First appearance | Chaos in Crystal |
| Voice actor | John Vernon |
Rex Shard is a convicted murderer in the animated television series SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron serving a nine-life sentence at the Megakat Maximum Security Prison chosen by Warden Cyrus Meece to operate the Gemkat 6000 in its trial run. He appears in the episode Chaos in Crystal and is voiced by John Vernon. In return, Meece is willing to shave some time off of Shard's prison sentence.
Amazed at how quickly the Gemkat 6000 works, Shard attempts to open the drill housing to get at the collected gems within and "take a few off the top." In doing so, he somehow causes the machine to backfire and explode. When Shard emerges from the mine, he finds that the explosion has somehow caused him to begin to rapidly change into a being made of unbreakable green crystal (exactly whether it has, improbably, literally caused Shard to begin turning into living crystal, or whether the crystal was grafted to his skin by the force the explosion, is never stated, although later events support the former).
Shard quickly discovers that he has the ability to turn whatever he touched into crystal, when he seizes and crystallizes his guards Talon and Lem. He then proceeds back to the prison, thirsting for revenge against the ones he deems responsible for his accident.
When he reaches the perimeter wall, he puts all his energy into turning it to crystal, which then causes him to complete his transformation into a totally crystalline being (further supporting the earlier theory that Shard has literally been turned into living crystal). Ignoring the fire from the prison guards, he punches through the brittle wall and entered the prison. He bursts into Warden Meece's office in the same manner, and turns him to crystal right before the eyes of a terrified Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs and Dr. Greenbox. The latter, who had created the Gemkat 6000, is next on his hit list.
Before he can even attempt to harm to the Deputy Mayor and the inventor, the SWAT Kats arrive, summoned by distress calls from the prison. He is hit in the chest with a blast from their cement machine gun, and sent flying into Warden Meece's private diamond vault.
This gives Deputy Mayor Briggs and Dr. Greenbox time to slip from the room, but coming into contact with the diamonds somehow causes a reaction in Shard's body. He grows to titanic proportions, bursting through the prison roof. It is here that he further explored his amazing powers. The impenetrable crystal shell surrounding his body makes any conventional weapons useless against him. The Swat Kats' newly developed Slicer Missiles break apart when they hit him, for instance.
The lasers of the Enforcer tanks which arrive shortly thereafter bounce harmlessly off him. Shard then finds he can form crystal shards in his hands and hurl them as projectiles (or even do the same with his impressive abs!). Using this technique he disables both the Turbokat and Commander Feral's personal tank.
But during this battle, his target has managed to escape: Briggs and Greenbox have fled in the Doctor's Jeep to Gemkat Labs, after retrieving the Gemkat 6000 from the mines to try and work on a way to reverse Shard's condition. Having a pretty good idea of where Gemkat Labs is, Shard stomps off towards it. This takes him through Megakat Springs, where he interrupts the Manx Invitational Golf Tournament.
After fending off more Enforcers, Shard turns the entire golf course and everyone there to crystal, including Mayor Manx, and once again got the best of Feral when he disables the Commander's chopper. He then heads to Gemkat Labs, where he stops Greenbox from finishing rewiring the Gemkat 6000 by grabbing and crystallizing him at last. The Deputy Mayor was his next target, but T-Bone suddenly comes out of nowhere (at least as far as Shard was concerned) on the Sandkat and whisks her to safety, the Gemkat 6000 with her. Shard tries to stop them by touching the ground and sending a "wave" of crystal after them, but the Sandkat leaps over a canyon to safety.
Undeterred and now mad with power, Shard heads for Megakat Dam, turning random landforms to crystal as he goes. Meanwhile the SWAT Kats have finished what Greenbox had started and rewired the device. They come after Shard, who has succeeded in turning the reservoir to crystal, and a fierce battle ensues over the frozen expanse of the crystallized water. The Gemkat 6000's beam is unable to penetrate Shard's armor, and Banshee Missiles barely make even tiny cracks in him. Annoyed at the "SWAT Gnats," Shard suddenly comes up with a brand new power. He focuses the sun's rays through his crystal hand into a deadly heat beam, which he uses to shoot down the Kat's Eye News chopper when it becomes annoying to him as well.
The Turbokat proves too difficult for him to hit, and right at that moment T-Bone comes up with an idea to defeat Shard. A Mach 5 sonic boom as the jet flies past Shard at an alarming speed rocks the crystal giant and with an agonized scream, he breaks apart, turning back into a normal sized, and unconscious, crystal cat. The vigilantes then use the Gemkat 6,000 to return him fully back to normal.
As a result, everything he had turned to crystal also returns to its normal state: Talon and Lem, the prison, the Enforcers, Mayor Manx and Megakat Springs, Dr. Greenbox, the dam, etc. Shard is then taken into custody by the Enforcers and returned to prison.
[edit] Trivia
According to Mark Lungo's Animato! article on the series, Rex Shard was slated to make a second appearance, in an episode entitled Cold War. He would have gained power over the weather by diving into an experimental energy source, and frozen the city. Unfortunately, because SWAT Kats was cancelled, it never got any further than a short script by Lance Falk.
