ThunderCats
Bio-Booster Armor Guyver
The Coming Darkness
Episode Four
"It's so good be back home, isn't it, Try?" Fahd asked as they neared the outer perimiter of the colony. Both men were burdened with bulging sacks strapped to their shoulders and hips. Fabrics, cheeses, even maps curled into tubes at their sides of lands no Thunderian had yet explored. Also, vital information.
"It'll be good to get off my damn feet," Tryphon groused in his usual tone. "Why couldn't they have at least given us a mule?!" The pair had parted with the caravan of traders where the route came nearest to their home.
"They..."
"Needed them to carry all their crap. I know, I know!" Tryphon's exclamation caught the attention of the two guards, Lynx and a male Cheetah. Neither wore armor aside from leather, yet each had a sword at his hip.
"Somethin' the matter?" the Cheetah asked once they were inside normal speaking distance. Fahd adjusted his pack and offered a sheepish grin.
"My partner is just weary. We've had a long journey." The sun was reaching its noonday aperture, the air redolent with the noise of people and scents of growing things. Spring was, in his opinion, getting off to a smashing start. "I brought you something, Renard," Fahd said as he reached into the pouch on his left hip and produced a small parcel. The Cheetah accepted it, untying the string to reveal the crushed yellow material within. "You said you liked spicy food."
"Holy SHIT!" he exclaimed on placing a small portion on his tongue.
"It's called habanero pepper."
"Bit much for ya?" the Lynx named Porval asked with a smirk.
"Always loved a challenge," Renard wheezed before re-tying the parcel. "Thanks, Fahd."
"You're welcome. If it's not too much trouble, could you please arrange an audience with His Majesty as soon as possible?" Fahd could feel Try's incredulous stare. "It's very important."
"What about?" Porval asked with concern at the edge of his voice.
"We have several maps of the surrounding countryside, as well as information regarding the location of Oswald Lisker and the current circumstances of Grune."
"Well..." Both guards paused a moment before gaping at the pair of men. "Run that by me again?" Fahd did so.
"Fuck me running," Renard said before dashing to a comm-panel set within the stone archway. He spoke in hushed, hurried tones before the voice of Sir Tygra exclaimed "WHAT?!" then barked for them to be escorted to Cat's Lair. Four young kittens appeared and began to relieve them of thier burdens. "We'll make sure these get to your shop," Renard said as the young ones scampered off. "Sir Tygra just cleared a spot for you."
"Then we'd best not keep him waiting," Fahd said with a nod before passing between them.
"As if my feet didn't hurt enough," Tryphon said as they took the stone-paved path leading to Cat's Lair. "But you just HAD to go and drag ME into Cat's Lair!"
"Oh, stop it, you," Fahd said, grinning down at his diminutive lover. "You would have been called into the Royal Hall all the same."
"I still want to rest my feet." The rest of the trip to the Lair passed in silence until Sho emerged and hailed them.
"How was that Watershed place?" he asked. Fahd felt Tryphon grow stiff.
"It was a rather good place, all in all," he said. "Oh, I have something for you."
"Huh?" Fahd reached into his sapphire robe and retrieved a vial of viscous liquid on a chain. "This warms on contact with skin. It's a massage oil."
"O... kay..." Sho said warily as he accepted it into his hands.
"I hope you find it useful," Fahd explained while ignoring Tryphon's exasperated groan.
"Um... Thank you," Sho said lamely. "So, I have to get to the Forge. Good to see you back!" Sho called as he jogged toward the far bank of stairs and vanished down the one leading to Sir Bengali's forge.
"You are incorrigible," Try nearly growled as they resumed their march to the Royal Hall.
"Huh?"
"Are you so desperate that you'd try to vicariously involve yourself in other people's relationships because ours isn't going fast enough?" The hurt in those words brought Fahd up short.
"Not at all," Fahd replied. "If you must know, the Vanguard asked me to keep an eye out for such a thing."
"You... wait, what?"
"How would I know anything about Sho and Myrlha's intimate time together?" Fahd asked reasonably and truthfully. "I didn't tell you because I didn't think you'd care about it." They resumed their march down increasingly rich carpeting and busts of historical Thunderians between ornate pillars which stretched from floor to ceiling.
"I..." Fahd leaned down and stole a quick kiss from him, heartened at his attempt at a response before rising again. "You should learn to trust me a bit more, eh?" Tryphon blushed and remained silent the rest of the way to the Royal Hall.
Cheetara sat upon her throne, bored to tears. It had been barely twenty minutes since Jagara had announced herself ready to recieve Lion-O for an explanation of the Book of Omens. She had wanted to attend, yet the duties of a monarch had prevented it. As such, she had remained in the Royal Hall and had pored over reports which left her longing for action. Her stomach twinged as her and Lion-O's cub kicked yet again and a hand shot to her rounding belly. Their cub was growing quickly within her.
Cheetara looked up as the doors to the Royal Hall opened to admit a clearly agitated Tygra before two other men. A Tyger clad in blue robes preceeded a young WildCat man who looked as if he wished he were anywhere else. She adjusted herself into the plush throne as they drew near and knelt.
"I'm told you have important information," she said before quickly re-adjusting her hips.
"Forgive us," the Tyger said, "but we were told..."
"To expect Lion-O?" she finished. "He's... currently busy." She resisted the urge to adjust her increasingly pregnant frame again, transferring the desire to the hand which re-adjusted her crown atop her head. "So, what can I do for you?"
Lion-O goggled at the fountain in the center of the sequestered room Jagara had claimed for herself. Two women were twined about each other in glimmering marble in a pose that could not be mistaken for anything other than erotic. Twin fountains of clear water flowed from their mouths, posed as if in preparation for a deep kiss, and flowed down their stone breasts to a basin at their feet.
"In my position," Jagara' voice began as she emerged from behind the fountain, "It is often difficult to engage in carnal needs." She came fully into view, still clad in the abbreviated Egyptian garb she had worn on their first meeting. "I was still able to satisfy... certain curiosities I had in my younger days."
"I see," Lion-O said lamely before tearing his eyes away from the statue. "I have come as requested," he said at length, drawing on his royal background to lend authority to his words.
"Please," she said, "Follow me." Lion-O kept his gaze from the section of her rear which writhed beneath the small skirt she inisted on wearing unitl a mostly unlit chamebr greeted them. In the distance rested a golden book on a marble pedestal. Lion-O felt the Sword growl at his hip as he drew closer.
"The Book of Omens," he said in a hushed whisper.
"Yes," Jagara replied. "Generation of our history, all recorded, but in far more than wrting." Jagara sauntered up to him, pulling a golden key from between her ample breasts. "With this key," she began, "and your Sword, you can enter the book"
"Enter it?"
"The book is an archive" she began, staring into his eyes, "yet far more than that. I cannot fully explain it, but I will try." Jagara sauntered up to the pedestal in the cone of white light, staring down at the book with an inscrutable expression. "With the Sword, you can enter the book, but only the key will get you past the Guardian."
"To do what?"
"To enter our past."
Lion-O sputtered for a moment at the import her words. "You mean this book can travel through time?"
"No. Time travel magics are far too dangerous. I know," she said with a raised hand, "that Mumm-Rana and I used such to propel Sho into a possible future. Where such travel becomes a real danger is when one arrives in the past."
"Paradoxes, right?" he asked with a chill settling in his spine.
"And the resistance of time to them," Jagara replied. "I am no expert on the more intimate workings of the universe, but I know that altering the past has outcomes we simply cannot predict."
"What are you getting at?"
"The Book of Omens does not allow time travel in the strictest sense," she said. "Instead, it allows whomever enters it to experience our recorded history first-hand. It... recreates the time you wish to visit. I believe you would call it a simulator?"
"Okay," he replied, his eyes locked on the book and his hand on the hilt of the Sword of Omens. "For what purpose? Education alone can't be it."
"You are correct, my king," she said. "The book is the ultimate marriage of Thunderian sorcery and Thunderian science. It was crafted in a long lost golden age of our people, meant to serve as an everlasting record. But, known only to my own bloodline, there is another purpose."
"And that is?"
"The Book waits for one man to enter it. I belive that man is you."
"What..." Lion-O stared at the golden-bound volume atop its pedestal. The gleam of its golden covers both enticed and taunted him. Jagara offered the key, which he accepted. It was cold in his hand, almost frozen.
"The Key," she began, "can open the book, and give you acess to the Guardian. It will need to see both the Sword and the Key to grant you access to our knowledge. To get to where I think you should be, you will need something else. Proof of your right to plumb it's depths. You will know what it is when the Guardian asks of it." Lion-O nodded before walking toward the Book of Omens. The Key entered the lock, and the world transformed.
"Repeat that?" Cheetara asked as she sat above the kneeling forms of Fahd and Tryphon.
"We stayed in the home of Guyver Two," Fahd said. "He is in the trading town of Watershed." Cheetara leaned back in her throne as best she was able.
"Have you uncovered his plans?"
"So far as we saw, he has no designs against us," Fahd replied. "Lisker asked no questions about the Colony, nor did Maria or Natalie."
"Who is this Natalie?"
"A human woman from a tribe of Warrior Maidens," Fahd explained. "She had been a pawn in a scheme led by a woman of their tribe, by the name of Solange, to gain control of that woodland kingdom. Though Solange now reigns there, Lisker keeps their arrows away from Watershed."
"And his... muskets?" Fahd nodded. "Away from them." Cheetara called up the diagrams on her personal padd, loaded with weapons data from the Tuska archives. "Primitive weapons, but effective. Are you sure he has no designs concerning our well-being?"
"Positive, Your Highness," Fahd said. "Even if he did, these weapons would barely be of any use to him."
"True," she conceeded. "If he truly wished us harm, he would come himself to challenge Sho." Cheetara shook her head slightly. "Now, what of Grune?"
"Kittens!" Avril cried out. The young of the Colony sat before her in the near-claustophobic room of the school. Desks were set in rows leading to the rear door. Avril took stock once more of the blackboard at the rear of her elevated podium. Just behind her stood Etain and Myrlha, the latter sans ThunderCat emblem. The building had once been designated a storage facility and had been hastily retrofitted into a school. Avril's own long desk sat off to her right, sunshine beaming in through the street-facing windows.
"Good morning, Miss Avril," they all said in unison. Avril stepped from behind her desk, her skirt and blouse crisp.
"To my right," she said, waving a hand to a similarly clad Etain, "is Miss Etain. Say hello, children."
"Hello, Miss Etain."
"Thank you," Avril continued. "Over here is Miss Myrlha. Now, you may know her as a ThuderCat, but in here she is Miss Myrlha."
"Hello, Miss Myrlha," they said. There was no confusion regarding Myrlha's status in their voices and she envied them their adaptability somewhat.
"Today, we're here to get to know each other," she said. "We all came from a... bad envrironment." It was understatement writ large, and she knew it. "I want you all to know that from here, our futures contain possibilities. It will take a lot of hard work, both on your parts and ours, but we are up to this challenge. I'll begin today with the basics. Some of you may know these things, some may not. I feel it's best that we all start on the same page. If you'll turn to your Third Earth Guides," she said, unearthing her own Teacher's Edition of the book hastily compiled by the ThunderCats, "we shall begin learning about our new world." Learning about their old homeworld, she thought, could wait. These children needed to learn about the immediate dangers of the world around them and how to interact with the people who shared their new home. Avril silently thanked Tygra and Laheela for talking to Bolkin and Wollo merchants in the colony and asking them to come in to provide local views. She saw the students ready the relevant documents for study. King Lion-O had even tasked Snarf to the school eatery to prepare healthy meals. It had been a task Snarf had taken to with gusto. Feeding people was something the king's former nursemaid loved to do.
"We'll start with Chapter One," she called, "The Wollos..."
"Oh... Shit..." Lion-O said on viewing the massive sculture. The Eye stood encircled by four serpentine dragons, who began moving at his approach. The lower-left head snaked out towards him, its sulfuric breath stealing the air from his lungs. Each head studied him, and each seemed more than ready to strip his flesh from his bones. Space was meaningless in the eternal night in which this oasis of light existed.
"Hast Thou the Key?" the nearest head asked.
"Here," he said, presenting the golden Key in his hand. The snout of the Dragon sniffed it before yanking its head up with the other three following suit and fixing their crimson eyes on him.
"Thy scent is pleasing to us," all four said in unison. "Yes. You are of the blood."
"What?" Lion-O asked.
"Long have we waited for thee," they all said as the slit in the Eye statue began to glow with a soft light. "One last test shall ye face. Shed thy blood upon thy blade." The tone of command in the voice was irresistable. Lion-O pressed a thumb to the Sword, allowing a bead of crimson to appear. At once, a drakine head snaked out and stretched a tongue over it.
"The Herald has emerged!" all four heads cried in unison before a doorway opened in the stone base beneath the Eye. "Enter, Son of Prophecy. Long has the king awaited you." Lion-O trod into the light, both curious and afraid of what he mght find.
The heat from the Forge was, as normal, nearly stifling. Already sweating, Sho stripped his blue tunic off before donning a pair of rough-hewn gloves. The Forge itself rested beneath the Lair, a circular chamber bathed in crimson light from the glowing heat of the forge in the center. The cast-iron chamber rested in a recessed pit and even at a distance its heat was baking. Bengali stood before it, shirtless as well, hammering away at a piece of glowing-hot metal.
"More plowshares?" he asked as he wiped sweat off his brow and moved to a pile of unfinished metal.
"Panthro's handling swords these days," Bengali said before swinging his hammer down once more. "One less thing on our to-do list."
"At least we got Panthro's work order done," Sho said as he grasped a cold sheet of iron in a large set of tongs and lowered it into the fire. "That one was a bitch."
"You didn't have to mix the metals for the alloys," Bengali said. "He must think I'm a miracle-worker."
"You got it done," Sho replied as he heated the metal.
"And spent a week away from Darin. I don't mind the workload, but I wanna be with my kid!"
"At least you can have one."
"Aw, shit. Sho, I'm sorry..."
"No worries," he replied with a tone sunnier than he felt. "So, how're you and Pumyra getting on?"
"Pretty good," Bengali said as he hoisted the heated metal from the forge and brought his hammer down on it. Sparks flew from where cold iron met near-molten metal. Sho brought his own hammer down, shaping the plowshare held in the tongs in his left hand. "She's feeling frisky again."
"You didn't complain last time, as I recall."
"I didn't already have a kid then, either," Bengali said as he brought his hammer down. "Darin's just sleeping through the night now."
"Keep your rocket in your pocket, as they said here in the States," Sho said. He lifted the plowshare, finely formed from his hammer, and lowered it into the trough of water to cool it amid a cloud of steam. "Not exactly armor plating for the ThunderTank, is it?"
"That was just blanks," Bengali said. "At least you didn't have to worry about proper alloys. That shit's ALWAYS annoying." Sho cast a glance at the Forge's Clean Room, where Bengali labored to create the alloys Panthro needed. "Not looking forward to what he'll need for our first FTL ship." Benglai glanced upward before rolling his eyes. "We're gonna have to mine asteroids to find the ores we need for me to develop the metals we need to buid ships that can go that fast. And the're not as important as the energy sheilds, the deflectors... And here we are with a damn forge!"
"Making blades for the fields can be kinda distracting," Sho offered lamely. Rivulets of sweat ran down his hard chest, the hammer rising and falling in a steady cadence. "Wonder how they go through so many?"
"Soil can dull a blade quick," Bengali said, grateful for the small distraction. "Speaking of..."
"I finished those yesterday," Sho said, indicating the blades which had been sent in for re-sharpening. "Those vibro-blade blanks," Sho shook his head at the thought. "Never thought my own weapons would be manufactured."
"If anyone can do it," Bengali replied while sparks flew from another blow of his hammer, "Panthro can. I just hope no one cuts his own head off using those things."
"Same here." Sho grasped another roughly shaped piece of metal with the tongs in his gloved hand and lowered it into the fire. He stoked the flames with the pedal near his right foot, the metal glowing red hot as he did so. Tiny embers flew from the flames as he did so, winking out like crimson fireflies.
"Got a date in mind?" Bengali asked to fill the silence.
"Not yet," Sho said as the shaped metal heated. "A lot on our plate right now. I'm thinking once school's out."
"Myrlha helping to teach kids," Bengali said as he extacted the red-hot shape of metal and readied his hammer. Words suddenly left him.
"Yeah," Sho said, his own shape of metal reaching optimum heat. The human's shoulders slumped a bit before firming up once more.
"If you wanna talk..."
"Thanks," Sho said after a moment's struggle. Bengali nodded, said gesture unseen by Sho, as he brought his hammer down on the heated metal which now rested on his anvil.
Cheetara closed her eyes in thought as she processed the story told to her by Fahd and Tryphon. Grune truly was alive and at the head of another army, albeit one more poorly armed this time. A metal arm, that detail had stood out. She made a note to ask Panthro and Sho about the likelihood of the traitor having found a relic of Second Earth. The great doors swung open, interrupting her reverie as Tygra strode the length of the red carpet. She hid a grimace as he knelt, their insistence of first-name basis while not in the presence of the civillian population could not dissuade the others from genuflecting in the Royal Hall, and rose at her beckoning.
"You got all that, I trust?"
"So, it's official. Grune lives." Tygra snorted. "The reaper overlooked him."
"Cockroaches are easier to get rid of, it seems." She adjusted her position upon the throne before giving it up as a lost cause and rising. The mortification Tygra had to have felt about his queen rising before him just barely showed through. "I may be queen, now, but I am also pregnant and that chair is murder on my butt."
"I understand, Cheetara."
"I need your thoughts on this." She stepped down from the dias of the twin thrones, stepping gingerly as the muscles in her lower back protested at this newest abuse.
"At the risk of sounding like a sycophant," he began, "Grune would be insane to attack us. Not only are we better armed, our people are far better motivated. They rose up for their freedom, and they'll fight twice as hard for their homes."
"That still doesn't make up for a lack of a military."
"We both know who does, and I don't think he'll have any problems fighting against his own kind. Especially if this 'Clutch' is as bad as Tryphon and Fahd reported." She pressed her hands against her lower back and kneaded the soreness there. "The prosthetic arm, however, is troubling. He COULD have found a relic that fit his needs, but the odds against that are staggering."
"A new player, or an old one."
"Mumm-Ra didn't do technology," Tygra replied as he pensively stroked his chin. She took note of the two missing claws, just beginning to grow back. "A player who prefers to stay in the shadows," he said eventually.
"We can worry about that later," she said as the pain eased. "Grune will attack us. The only questions are when and how."
"Your enemy will not attack where you are strongest, but where you are weakest," Tygra said. "If you do not know where you are weakest, rest assured your enemy will."
"That really doesn't sound like you," Cheetara replied with a slight teasing note.
"It was in a book Turmagar gave Lion-O. 'The Art of War'. Thundera could have used a few more like this Sun Tzu."
"I'm grateful Plun-Darr had so few. So, where are we weakest, if not here?"
"We're weakest in trade with other places on the continent..." Both snapped their eyes to one another's.
"Trade routes..." Cheetara gasped.
"Interrupting caravans. It wouldn't just hamper us, it would weaken us politically. If we can't defend the routes..."
"Others lose confidence in us, not to mention vital trade they need as much as we do. What's the duty roster for tomorrow?"
"We have the twins available," Tygra reported after checking his datapad.
"They're cleared on the HoverCats, right?'
"Yes, just two weeks ago. Where will you be sending them?"
"To talk to an old friend who knows more about trade routes than anyone else I know."
"Ah, Salvador," he said in understanding. "I agree. The Berbils recently helped complete restoration work to his town. They report he and his family are quite well."
"Employing spies, are we?"
"Merely checking in on old friends."
Penal Colony 775 had been carved, tunnelled, blasted, and forged from an asteroid of tungsten, some thought left over from the creation of the universe, and had more than a few names due to its semi-hemispherical design. The most popular was the Avocado due to its resemblance to a pitted fruit in cross-section, which had unseated the Grey Penal Planet that month. The dome at the very top, fully four thousand meters wide at its base, served as the central command hub for the decks and decks of interred criminals, terrorists, mercenaries and the like. CONTROL guards still patrolled the corridors amid soldiers armed with phased plasma rifles and orders to kill on sight.
At its apex rested the former office of Commandant Vladimir Lenin. The dark, rich wood panels had been stripped in favor of military grey steel. The ornate desk remained, stained walnut and older than anything else on the entire metal rock. The endless field of stars beyond the tri-polymer windows did not attract the slightest bit of attention from the man now seated behind said desk.
He was wide of frame from decades spent in military service to the Pan-Galactic Federation, only showing the earliest signs of age despite his nearly seventy years. Hard muscle still graced his bones. His pate was entirely bald, having felt that military buzz-cuts were no longer a necessity for a man of his service length. No brown spots were evident on his exposed skin, or on unexposed skin for that matter. A broom-head moustache adorned his upper lip beneath a nose deformed from many breaks and eyes that were sharp as a scalpel. The left breast of his uniform threated to sag under the weight of the "salad bar" of ribbons which represented numerous decorations earned. The glow of the monitor on the far wall bathed his angular face in pale light. He watched as the teal-armored figure ripped apart the Vertis and many of its crew, bursts of bright blue beams doing nothing to its carapace.
"A near-perfect weapon," Sven Thorson said. From the shadows emerged a woman as tall as she was beautiful even in military drab. The jacket fit her athletic torso perfectly, skirt ending just above the knees and legs encased in sheer dark stockings that ended in sensible flat shoes. Her platinum hair was up in a bun, piercing blue eyes reigning above angular features.
"Certainly fearsome, sir," Sif Gunnarsdottir said, her voice as crisp as the creases of her uniform.
"A Ganymede-Class warshp. Illegal upgrades everywhere, and this... THING destroyed it!" Sven leaned back into the overstuffed chair. "These Thunderians are in possession of a walking super-weapon."
"A situation which, I assume, you find unacceptable." Sif kept her tone clipped and formal, devoid of emotion. It was one of the things Sven found rather appealing in an adjunct.
"Search CONTROL's records for their best recruiter," he said. Other than a quick blink, Sif gave no outward reaction.
"Of course, sir. And, when this... thing..."
"Young human boy. Name of Sho Fukamachi," Sven corrected. "I had some men due for R&R when we picked up Shiner, had them ask around. Even heard he's got a cat-girl to keep his bed warm. A ThunderCat, no less. Bit of a national hero in those parts."
"Hence the diplomatic approach. As I was saying before, sir, what about when that fails?"
"CONTROL had something interesting going some thrity-odd years ago," Sven Thorson said. "Some kind of super-cop program. It went to hell right after it went to prototype. Seems like recently deceased cops didn't take well to finding themseves waking up to mostly metal bodies and computer-augmented brains. The last one damn near blew up the entire facility and the plug was pulled." He began the playback of the Vertis assault again. "I had it quietly reinstated about four years ago."
"Oh?"
"Had to keep it compartmentalized, no one in the loop who didn't need to be there. Research like this only pays off if it's done before some soft-hearted wing-nut blows the whistle."
"So, it's done."
"Nearly. We're ready to go to prototype. My people assure me all the problems of the first generation are fixed. We just need some recruits, and I have just the ones in mind."
"What's the name of this project?" Sif asked.
"I'll brief you in fully once our volunteers are confirmed, but we've taken to calling it the Silverhawks Initiative."