ThunderCats in its entirety © Warner Bros.

Summary: "Trials of Lion-O," extra scene. Takes place between chapters seven and eight of "The Rebels."

No, Lion-O. I'm afraid you are quite dead.

. . .

Not yet, Lion-O. The Spirit Stone has deemed you worthy of another chance to walk among the living.

. . .

It's not that simple, Lion-O. While your first life was given to you, your second life must be earned.

. . .

You must complete a series of trials.

. . .

Your only other choice is death. Pass through this door and you will begin a series of trials, designed to test whether you can overcome your greatest weaknesses, to see if yours is a life worth saving. Good luck.

..::~*~::..

Cautiously, I stepped through the portal of red-violet light, letting it crackle shut behind me. It had been pure luck that I'd had the Gauntlet and Spirit Stone with me when I died. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be facing these strange, impossible trials. Not for the first time, I wondered who – or what – could take the forms of my friends so perfectly. First Kit and Kat, who had cheered for me when I passed their trial. Cheetara, who had boasted that she'd won even though I'd gotten the key first. Panthro, who had punched like the ThunderTank. They wore my friends' faces, spoke with their voices, acted just like them.

Two left, I thought as I squinted through the darkness. Wherever the door had led me this time, I couldn't see a thing. Two more trials. Or maybe three, if one of the proctors turned out to be Snarf.

A chuckle escaped me. Good old Snarf. My faithful nursemaid and, at one point in my life, my only friend. They wouldn't do that. Would they?

I waited for something to happen, my mind a buzz. I felt like a truant cub having lessons literally pounded into me. Keep my eyes open. Look for the easy way. My greatest strength is as a leader. As far as I knew, my body was still lying at the bottom of the river, pinned beneath a ton of rock, yet I could feel new bruises blooming all over. I could smell Kat, touch Cheetara and Panthro, and my feet stopped at the floor rather than sinking into it. These spirits, or whatever they were, weren't making things easy. How could I possibly tell what was real and what wasn't? At least I hadn't been dumped headfirst out of the sky and into a briar patch again.

So, who would it be this time? My brother Tygra, or –

Felline.

I could see her in spite of the darkness, her fur so white it reflected the ambient light. By it, I could discern that she was sitting on some kind of metal shelf, and she briefly pressed a panel at her thigh. When she did, several lights popped into existence. They blinded me at first, but I blinked a few times and the glare subsided; it was coming from a row of computer monitors.

I stared at them, my gut sinking. Like the slums of Thundera, the labyrinthine briar, and my father's throne room, I knew this place.

We were in the cell blocks of Mumm-Ra's ship, the Black Pyramid.

"All right," I said by way of greeting. "Let me have it. What do I have to do this time?"

She didn't answer. More lights bloomed into cold, white brilliance, illuminating the entire block. The cells rose on tiered levels, groups of animals milling or swimming behind the shimmering, transparent force fields that kept them prisoner. Just like in Leo's memory, all the different, enslaved species from across the galaxies were present. Most were shouting, pressing up against the force fields, wailing when the electrified barriers shocked them hard enough to put out an elephant. It was hard to pick out what they were saying over all the barks, howls, growls, trumpeting, and squawks.

Felline shifted her eyes to the tableau, unspeaking.

"I have to set them free? This is going to be easy," I said, too loudly to cover up her silence. I confidently approached the control panel.

I'd done it once before, after all, while reliving my ancestor's memories. Calling on Leo's knowledge of the ship's systems, I began entering the lock release systems. I started with the explosive collars. Once those shut down, the overhead lights turned a warning red, a klaxon wound up and began blaring, and a countdown took over most of my monitor screen.

According to the rapidly decreasing numbers, I had thirty seconds to free them all before the collars reactivated and detonated.

"Maybe not so easy," I muttered.

I pushed one of the urgently blinking lights, watching it go from red to green. However, the force field blocking the dogs and jackalmen didn't power down. That was when I noticed that only half of the lock releases were on this station – the other half were on the next panel over. I stretched for it and managed to press a second release with the tip of a claw.

They poured out of their cells in an avalanche of black, brown, red, and white, their olive green jumpsuits straining over muscled bodies. In an instant, the noise in the block spiked, because the dogs and monkeys began brawling.

Wait, why were they fighting? They were supposed to run to the weapons blocks and engine room as planned. Instead, they were tearing each other apart.

"Stop!" I yelled, but my voice flattened like a felled tree, achieving no distance at all. "Hey!"

Confusion made me hesitate, but not for long. I didn't have time to falter now; the countdown had not paused. Maybe if I released the rest, the crush of animals would push the monkeys toward the exits. I chose the elephants next, straining to reach the lock for the vulture-men and birds.

Complete chaos. The elephants, towering over their neighbors, stampeded out of their cell with no care for who might be under their heavy feet. Although the birds immediately took flight to safety, my one success didn't erase the crushed bodies left in the herd's wake. "Why two?" I demanded of the monitor. "Why can't I set them free one at a time?"

Panicking, I went for the tigersharks and lizards. The wave of water from the tigershark cell seemed to shock the dogs and jackalmen back to their senses, but incensed the monkeys, who turned on their water-dwelling neighbors. Furred and sandpaper-skinned bodies plummeted from the levels, screaming. The lizards swarmed out like oil skimming over the water, but when they reached the stairs, the birds and vulture-men went berserk, attacking them from above.

"No!" I cried, my fingers as stiff and cold as blocks of ice. It was all falling apart, and there was nothing I could do. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I couldn't control this mess.

Two seconds had transformed the cell block into a brutal battlefield, and as the timer ticked down . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . the collars detonated and it descended just as quickly into graveyard stillness. Nothing moved or made a sound except for the slow drip of blood.

Mouth open, lungs frozen, I backed away from the monitors, my paws dropping lifeless to my sides. What had I done?

At that moment, the lights over the cell blocks went out, plunging them into darkness. The klaxon ceased. All I could hear was my own ragged breathing. The seconds ticked by, slower than my racing heart. I'd failed.

By Thundera, I'd failed.

Numb, I waited for my fate to arrive. My breathing calmed, the darkness pressing close.

Then it dawned on me.

I'd failed, but the trial hadn't ended. I was still here. There was no door, no key. The monitors were a blazing hum of white.

So, what was I missing? Felline was just sitting there, swinging her feet, watching me. There was something else I was supposed to do, but I had no idea what. I glared at her. In the previous trials, my friends had always had something to say. Advice, instructions, hints and clues. But she'd given me nothing. Nothing. And she'd let me kill all those animals.

I snarled, wanting to break something. I longed to grab her by her skinny arms and shake the answer out of her. I could do it, too. She was less than half my size, but I was positive that passing this trial did not involve bullying one of my friends.

Abrupt shame washed through me, hot and bilious, and I forced myself to back down. When had I turned into a bully? Because that was exactly what I had become in life.

Think, Lion-O, I scolded myself, fighting the despair that returned full force. What attribute did Felline represent? What new part of me could be labeled a weakness? I'd had to outsneak the sneaks, outrace the racer, overpower the powerful, and . . .

And then it came to me. Simply. I had to –

"Outthink the thinker," I breathed.

At last, I elicited a response from her. Her glacial eyes brightened and her ears pricked forward. In spite of her white face and overall smallness, she looked an awful lot like Panthera when she did that. Expectant. Admiring. And something else . . .

"It's you," I said idiotically. "You're the trial, not them." I gestured at the invisible cell blocks, the pathetic bodies of the animals I had doomed with my haste.

"It's not like I know everything," she said, neither confirming nor denying it. "If I did, I could have stopped you from taking us up the mountain. I would have known what it was that the Book was really saying."

"But you hear everything," I exclaimed, speaking faster with the conviction that I had stumbled, at last, into the answer I so desperately needed to pass this trial. "You see everything. You never say anything. You're the only one of us who can put it all together, aren't you?"

I stopped talking as the meaning of what I was saying sank in. She stood apart from everyone. Even if it was by her own choice, it seemed sad to me. Why did she do it?

Suddenly, I wondered what I looked like to her, stubborn, loud, and charging around like I knew everything. Hadn't these trials taught me anything yet? They weren't about stealth, or speed, or strength. They were about using my head. And I still wasn't doing it. She had been following a fool this whole time.

She waited while I worked this out, giving away nothing. She was like the Book itself, sealed tight and full of knowledge that I didn't even know I didn't know.

"Say something," I said finally, nettled.

"The difference between you and me," she said softly, putting her tiny paw over my bigger one, "is that I know how to observe the consequences of my actions and adjust my behavior accordingly."

"Then help me," I snapped. "Leo didn't bring down the Black Pyramid by himself. Panthera helped him." Well, it was more like the other way around, but I wasn't going to dwell on the details. "I can't do this alone, and I'm running out of time. Tell me what you know!"

"This is a simulation," she said without preamble, and I gave an exasperated sigh – she'd been withholding information simply because I hadn't asked for it! Was she like that in real life?

She moved my paw aside and tapped at the keyboard, fingers flying as she input a complex string of functions that scrolled across the screens, white on black. The lights responded, going out and then coming back on full strength; the cells were occupied with living animals once more, all shouting, all desperate for freedom. "It's meant to test your ability to process consequences. Like all puzzles, there is a solution. To find it, you have to listen."

"Listen?" I repeated. "What, to them? I can't hear anything in all that!"

She snorted. "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I can?"

Her words drew my eyes up, to her furred ears, larger and more sensitive than mine. I took a breath. Two. Three. "All right. What do you hear?"

One of her ears twitched, pointed toward the cells. "There is an argument between the dogs and the monkeys. A monkey was found dead with his throat bitten by a canine."

"So the dogs and monkeys can't be released at the same time."

She shrugged. Then she went on with, "The birds are starving. They will eat lizards if given the chance. The monkeys can't swim. The elephants aren't allowed to meditate."

The rules seemed simple enough. "I have to release two groups at once. Birds and lizards can't go together, but birds and dogs can," I said slowly. My brows pinched. It was hard to visualize this. "Monkeys and birds, not monkeys and tigersharks. But it sounds like elephants can't go with anyone because they're going to stampede, anyway . . . ." I trailed off with a snarl. Turning sharply on my heel, I paced six steps to the edge of the catwalk, and then six steps back. Think! She'd figured it out already, but I knew better than to ask for the solution.

I kept pacing. Birds – dogs – elephants – lizards – monkeys – tigersharks – over and over again, different combinations – elephants – birds – ah!

"All right," I said at last. "I think I've got it. Wish me luck?"

I said the last part half-jokingly, but she didn't do it. Of course not.

I put my fingers on the keys, but I didn't immediately begin the simulation. I could clearly see what I'd done wrong the first time. I'd assumed I knew what the trial was at the start, without seeking information. I'd taken it for granted that these animals were united as they had been in Leo's memory. I'd dismissed Felline as a mere observer.

None of them had been simple observers. These trials, like life, weren't black and white.

"There are two control panels," I pointed out. I could picture Panthera, tall, dark, and fierce, standing here in her skintight spacesuit, bent over the keyboard with Leo at her side. "Will you help me release the locks?"

Felline's tail flicked. "I will help in any way I can. All you have to do is ask."

I studied her face. "You really mean that, don't you?" I asked quietly.

She smiled and took up her station at the second monitor. She was pretty, I realized, shocked that I'd never noticed before. Too often, she was either hiding in the background or yelling in my face. Not very flattering in either case. She was short, delicate, and feminine, the black stripes on her otherwise white face drawing attention to her small mouth and large, round eyes. Her hair, bound elegantly to the back of her head in the style of Thunderian nobles, flowed down her back when loose, long enough to prove a hindrance in a fight. A cat like her didn't belong on the battlefield, but she'd been there, right at my side, giving me everything she had, almost from the start. I hadn't seen this side of her, serene as falling snow, more than a few times. I wished that I possessed some of her calm. I wished that I had treated her better in the beginning.

"I'm sorry," I said, knowing it wasn't enough, that this wasn't really Felline, but I had to say something.

"I know," she said. I couldn't help but wonder if the real Felline would say the same thing. "Time is running out. Are you ready?"

I nodded, and then, preparing myself for the deafening klaxon, disabled the collars. "On my mark, release the birds."

..::~*~::..

Felline handed me the key, the same as all the others, long and brass, with a tiny Eye of Thundera in its bow and a single bit at the other end. "Life is never going to give you second chances like I can. Remember to use your resources. Especially those found in your friends. You're not going to know how to get out of every situation beforehand. That's impossible. Ask questions. Hear what we have to say. Listen to comprehend, not to reply. No king has ever stood alone."

"I understand," I said. For once, I didn't resent someone giving me advice. The door of light appeared like a rip in the air, its keyhole shining white. She stood across from me, smiling in that gentle way she had. I didn't move to insert the key; it felt like I was forgetting to do something. Cheetara had kissed my cheek. Was Felline about to do the same thing? I didn't know how I felt about that and cleared my throat. "Um, thanks."

"You're welcome, Your Majesty," she said. Her tail flicked. Amusement. No. She wasn't going to kiss me. And she might very well know what I had been thinking.

For some reason, that made me feel even more awkward. I couldn't look her in the eye anymore and instead watched her tail. The black tip twitched up in a beckoning way that would keep her cubs close if she had any; it was a primal instinct that I, though motherless, recognized, even though nobility and royalty in our society no longer kept their tails if born with one.

She giggled. "Is there something else you'd like to ask?"

I snapped to attention. Of course. Of course there was. What better time to put this lesson to use? "How many more trials are there?"

Her smile faded. "There is only one, and it's the hardest of them all. You'd better go now. Good luck, Lion-O."

"Yeah," I said uneasily. Now she was wishing me luck? What was I going to have to do in the final trial? It was a sure bet I'd be facing my brother. The thought alone was enough to make me clench my teeth. Better hurry up and get this over with before my temper ran away with me.

I approached the door and inserted the key. Gave it a quarter turn. Stepped back as the light sucked it up and then split wide enough for me to pass through. "See you."

I may have imagined it, for the crackling of the door was loud in my ears, but I thought I heard her speak before the door closed. I turned around. The door was already gone and the last trial had begun, but I held on to her words as if she'd whispered them against my skin.

I'll be waiting.

A/N: ThunderCats 2011 Omake Gekijō Presents: "Black and White."

"Cat's Cradle" is told solely from my OC's point of view. While I was able to insert a trap for her to solve in "Journey to the Tower of Omens," there was no way she could know what Lion-O faced during his trials in the Spirit Realm. Likewise, since she is now a member of the ThunderCats, she would indeed have judged one of his trials.

My solution was to write the scene as an extra and tell it from Lion-O's point of view. This particular trial is twofold: First is the distraction, which is a simplified version of a river-crossing puzzle. I wanted it to be infinitely more complex, but unfortunately, I am absolutely hopeless at this type of problem-solving, so I decided to keep it easy. To admit that someone who looks like Felline could know more than he does, and then to request her help, was the true trial.

It was difficult to explore Lion-O so personally, without viewing him through the lens of an OC. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you for taking the time to check this out!

All my love,

Anne