After they'd traveled some miles, a second hovercraft zoomed up next to them. The lizards aboard didn't look happy.
"Nothing?" Slithe rasped.
"No trace, General Slithe," the commander responded. "Probably washed out to the Great Sea."
Felline closed her dry, aching eyes. The sea. Endless and blue. Cold and empty. Like her.
"Mumm-Ra will not be pleased," Slithe muttered. He waved dismissively at the commanding lizard, and the second hovercraft peeled away and flew off onto other business. Probably to report back to Mumm-Ra.
Kaynar appeared at Felline's shoulder. He leaned around her, yellow and red eyes bright with laughter. "But surely these cute kittens will cheer him up," he said.
When WilyKit, Kat, and Snarf froze up under his stare, he giggled madly. Felline's heart pounded in her chest like a prisoner trying to break free. She hated feeling so helpless; if the jackalman chose to attack one of the kittens, she wouldn't be able to stop him even though she was right there between them. He would cut her down without losing his grin.
"If there's anything left of them," Addicus corrected him. He laughed his deep-chested monkey laugh.
"I can assure you, Addicussss, there won't be," Slithe said, his forked tongue lingering on the consonant in his fury. He raised his rifle and aimed it at Tygra. "Yours will be the shortest and last reign of any cat king."
Tygra mumbled something under his breath.
"What's that?" Slithe growled.
Felline lowered her head, hoping Kaynar wouldn't see her expression. This was it.
"I said," Tygra abruptly yelled, fangs flashing in the sunlight, "that I'd rather die a king than live forever as a mindless lackey!"
At that, Slithe decked him with the butt of his rifle.
"Well, you got one thing goin' for ya," Tygra said. He grimaced around the swelling in his lip. "You hit harder than the monkey."
"You wanna see how hard I hit?" Addicus growled. He picked Tygra up and threw him from the moving hovercraft, and then leaped after him with a spring of his powerful legs.
The hovercraft jerked to a halt. All eyes were on the pair on the ground; Kaynar, giggling, asked, "Can I play, too?" before he hopped down to take his turn at beating on Tygra.
Aboard the craft, tiny, clever fingers flew. Tygra may have been buying them time, but he wasn't going to last long under the brutal blows raining down on him.
"Hi," Kit sang at the jackalman and the monkey, waving a pair of binders over her head.
Kat waved the second pair, grinning. "Hey, there!"
Both generals looked up, Kaynar with a furious snarl, Addicus ridiculously agape.
Panthro, Cheetara, and Felline were already on the move. While the others went to help Tygra, Felline dropped to all fours and scampered across the deck. She wrested her gunblade from a surprised lizard. She rolled to one knee and snapped off a shot, disarming Slithe.
"Lizards! Attack!" he shrieked.
Felline scavenged the rest of their weapons, tossing WilyKat's flink to him. Cheetara shot by her in a blur, disarming every lizard on the craft. WilyKit happily accepted her flupe, and then they each dove out of the way as Slithe lumbered toward them. His yellow eyes narrowed, fixing on Felline.
Then his head jerked back from an unseen blow. Tygra appeared out of the air in front of him.
"That's for me," he said, drawing his arm back for another strike, "and that's for Lion-O!"
Felline bared her teeth in a fierce grin. This was it. This was what the ThunderCats could do when they worked together.
Now, they just had to get the Sword.
Addicus grabbed Tygra. They vanished over the side of the craft for the second time, boxing the whole way down. Felline looked around for Slithe, flicking her gunblade open. She parried a slash from a lizard bayonet, and then dropped and spun, sweeping the soldier's legs out from beneath him and sending him over the side.
A large hand grasped the back of her neck, fingers knotting in her fur. Slithe, who had come up behind her unnoticed, lifted her by the scruff. Ignoring how she thrashed and clawed at him, he heaved her overboard. She slammed into the ground.
"Forget the cats!" Slithe shouted from the craft. "The Sword is all that matters."
Obviously reluctant to abandon their fights with Panthro and Tygra, Kaynar and Addicus nevertheless jumped aboard.
"You have your lives," Slithe hissed down at the cats. "But they're of little good as long as I have this."
The sleeping Sword flashed in the sun, and he started to laugh.
Tygra and Felline opened fire a second too late. The hovercraft lifted, tilted, and turned, and their blasts bounced harmlessly off the underside. Tygra didn't give up, however. He ran after the retreating craft, still firing, until it put on a burst of speed and left him behind.
Panthro offered a metal hand to Felline. She took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet.
"Don't beat yourself up," Panthro rumbled, his eyes on the horizon. "They've done enough of that for us."
She shook her head in apology, pressing an arm to her bruised ribs, willing the pain to subside. She wouldn't be able to speak right then even if she had words to say.
"Your brother would be proud if he could see you now," Cheetara said, walking up behind Tygra.
"This isn't over yet," he angrily replied. "We're getting that Sword back."
The new Lord of the ThunderCats squared his broad shoulders and began to jog after the departed hovercraft, Cheetara by his side. He never checked to see if the others were following because he didn't need to. Panthro fell into a lope behind them. Felline stretched into a run to keep up with him, the twins and Snarf sprinting at her heels.
If the ground, the sky, and the backs of her friends smeared wetly together like paint, she tried not to mind it. She kept running into the blur, telling herself that they weren't leaving him behind, that they were heading for his legacy, while the tears dripped unchecked from her face.
..::~*~::..
The desert at night was full of moonlight, sand, and perpetual lightning.
On her belly, Felline scaled the dune and slipped between Panthro and Tygra. She peered over its wind-sculpted edge. To her surprise, they'd been much nearer the enemy stronghold than any of them, barring Panthro, had realized; it had taken little more than three hours to come this far. Still, she was tired. Blowing sand clogged her fur, irritated her eyes and nose, but she said nothing about it. Instead, she burrowed into the dune, hoping to soak up some of its warmth. The lightning made her scalp tingle.
"Mumm-Ra's temple," Cheetara murmured from the far right. "It's even scarier than I thought."
Felline thought she understood what Cheetara meant. There was something in the air, apart from the perpetual lightning, that felt ominous and heavy, like a poisonous gas or toxic smoke. But it was only sand, gritty and billowing on the wind. The temple itself rose out of the dunes, contemptuously brushing off the desert's attempts to bury it. It was huge. It was black. It was a pyramid, centered between four tall, angled towers, around the tops of which the lightning gathered in dancing spheres. On the desert floor, hovercraft moved slowly through the storm, passing around the black silhouettes of lizards on patrol.
"I nearly died in that pit, thanks to Grune," Panthro rumbled. He looked over Felline's head. "Sure you want me to help us get in? Getting out was hard enough."
"I don't like it either, General, but we have to get the Sword of Omens back," Tygra said. Time had done nothing to dim his anger, which burned hot and clean. It seemed driven by the grief simmering below it.
Panthro didn't offer further resistance. "There's an air shaft on the north side," he said instead. "Dangerous, but it's your call."
His mismatched eyes slid sideways. "King," he added.
The phrase, Better late than never, floated through Felline's mind, but she shooed it away. There was nothing "better" about this situation. Even if they had finally learned to work as a team, it was too late. Lion-O would never reap the benefits. It was possible none of them would. This was a suicide mission. They all knew it, but they had no other choice.
Tygra lowered Panthro's spyglass. "We need to take out the guards," he said.
Taking that as an order, Panthro nodded, stood, and jogged down the dune, letting the slope pull him into a run that would take the lizards by surprise.
Cheetara glanced over at Tygra, her eyes big and dark in the night. "You okay?"
"I always told him that I should be king," he murmured, anguished. "I never wanted it like this."
"The only thing we can do now is finish the job he started," she answered. She rose and followed Panthro down the dune.
Felline got to her feet, also, and sprinted after her, not wanting to see Tygra's tortured expression. He was the king now. She would follow him to the end, but she couldn't afford to get lost in his suffering as well as her own. She focused on the electricity in the air that made her fur crackle and snap with each stride. She kept a wary eye on the sky, also. The swirling black clouds were lit from within by the constant blue and purple lightning. Since the nexus of the storm was the apex of the pyramid, she doubted it was natural.
On the flat plain before the pyramid, hidden by the gusting sand, she drew the gunblade. She couldn't risk shooting the lizards or giving them time to open fire because the noise would bring reinforcements. Summoning Cheetara's coaching, she thought of nothing but strike, slash, block, parry, and counter, disarming lizards one by one. After a few hushed minutes, Panthro added the last couple of limp bodies to the dogpile, eliciting a drugged-sounding hiss and grunt from the incapacitated reptiles at the bottom.
"Nice work, General," Tygra said.
Felline folded the gunblade and returned it to its holster. She watched, curious in spite of herself, while Panthro walked up to the high, slanted, black wall and placed one hand, palm flat, against it.
Red light flared in a thin line, a perfect circle around his hand. The section of wall inside the circle sank inward, or maybe he pushed it in. At the contact, countless more red lines blazed across the black wall, streaming at angles, taking sharp corners, crossing, intersecting, revealing an intricate pattern in the darkness. Everybody froze as the lines extended into the desert sands under their feet, hinting at an even larger structure below them. In the center of the pattern, another section of wall sank inward, this one in the shape of a triangle and large enough to drive the original ThunderTank through. It then broke into three plates, which slid smoothly aside, allowing them entry.
It was darker inside, but not by much. Panthro peered around the corner, and then darted in, Felline and the others on his heels.
"So far so good," Panthro said. His voice echoed in the metallic corridor.
"My plan just may work after all," Tygra answered, sounding more cheerful than he had all night.
Of course, he'd spoken too soon. They reached the end of the corridor. It opened into a wider room, but red lights in the ceiling began blinking on and off in time to a klaxon's scream. A five-lizard patrol appeared out of another corridor, rifles in their hands.
"Whiskers," Tygra whispered.
They couldn't risk being seen so soon. They hurried backward, into the corridor still open to the storm outside, and pressed themselves against the smooth wall.
"Now what, King?" Cheetara asked over the blaring noise.
"Just . . . just let me think," Tygra said. His white face was awash in red, darker orange over his forehead and the bridge of his nose. The strain, which had started to show before they'd escaped from Slithe, was clearly getting to him.
"Don't worry," WilyKit piped up. "I've got this."
Not waiting for permission, she danced into the pentagonal room, fluffy tail and dagged skirt swishing. With her flupe at her lips and the lizards approaching on the quick-march, she began to play. It was a simple melody, but it teased at the corners of the brain. One by one, the lizards drooped – their eyelids, their heads, and their rifles.
As a group, Felline and the others rounded the corner.
"Way to go, Kit," Tygra praised her.
The little wildcat kept playing, prancing around the dozing lizards. Kit didn't look frightened at all, Felline noticed; this was familiar territory for a former pickpocket.
Unhurried, WilyKit joined them in another corridor. Once there, she stopped playing. In thirty seconds, the alarm shut off, but they didn't stick around to see what the lizards had made of the situation.
"We can't keep running around in the open like this," Tygra hissed in frustration after several tense minutes.
Felline felt like she was folding up, tighter and tighter, with each corner they took, each new direction they tried, and the pyramid presented them with hypnotizing uniformity. Cold metal walls, slippery metal floors, forty-five-degree angles, and dull red lights. And through it all, a strange smell. The air of the desert didn't mix well with the air of the pyramid. It occurred to Felline that they were breathing air that did not belong to Third Earth and she put out a hand to steady herself.
Then she shot a sharp glance at her hand. She'd touched not the solid metal paneling, but a grate, perhaps five feet by four. The funny smell was oozing out of it.
A ventilation shaft.
Snyar? Snarf asked, bringing the others to a halt. If not for him, they might not have known she'd stopped running and left her behind. She drew the gunblade and swung it open.
"Felline?" Kat asked, but she waved him back.
She struck, once, twice, and leaped out of the way. The metal grate clanged on the floor. Sheared-off screw heads bounced out of sight.
"Brilliant," Tygra approved, squeezing her shoulder as he climbed inside.
They tumbled in after him. Tygra and Panthro fitted the grate back over the hole, and Felline set the beam of her rifle low and steady to weld it back in place. They proceeded as a group in the cramped shaft, which didn't run straight or horizontal. Slowly, they rose within the pyramid. Feeling lightheaded, Felline wondered if she'd fallen asleep. The situation was so surreal, Lion-O dead, the alien air invading her body, while she crawled after Panthro in the dark.
"Where is it that we're going?" Panthro rumbled.
"To Mumm-Ra," Tygra said from up ahead.
"Then angle left."
After a few claustrophobic minutes, in which the shaft widened enough to let most of them stand, Kit asked, "What's that?"
"Yeah. I hear it, too," Kat said.
Felline canted her ears. She heard chanting. Dry lizard voices, low and throaty, hissing in rhythm. It was coming from another grate, this one the size of cargo bay doors. It wasn't nearly as secure, either, held in place by flimsy clamps at either end. Tygra dashed along it. He crouched on the far side, leaving room for the rest of them. The grate angled outward. The cats stayed well back, unwilling to let the animals in the room below catch sight of them. Felline crouched next to WilyKit and pricked her ears forward.
It appeared to be some kind of ceremony. Lizards draped in hooded white robes stood along the outer edge of a raised dais, facing inward. Within a red circle, Kaynar, Slithe, and Addicus stood. In front of them, Mumm-Ra hunched in his tattered cloak, eyes glowing like coals in his gray face. He raised bandaged, skeletal arms. The chanting ceased, and he spoke.
"At long last, the king of the cats is dead, and the Eye of Thundera will be mine once again."
There it was. The Sword of Omens, floating over a triangular pedestal in the center of the dais.
"And this time," Mumm-Ra breathed, "no spell will keep me from the Stone, for within these walls, my powers are immeasurable."
On cue, the lizards resumed chanting. Mumm-Ra joined in, speaking words that were nothing more than sinister-sounding gibberish to Felline, but they were obviously words of power. The Sword began to spin like the needle in a compass gone haywire, around and around, and she rubbed her arms to keep the fur from rising; somehow, without it making a sound, she could tell that the Sword was in distress.
"I can't see anything. What's going on?" WilyKat demanded in a half whisper.
"A thousand bad things, kid," Panthro growled.
Cheetara glanced at Tygra. "What d'you wanna do?"
"Drop in for a surprise attack," he answered matter-of-factly.
They stared at him, but Panthro was the one who burst out with, "And land in the middle of trouble?"
"It's not a perfect plan, but we owe it to Lion-O to try," Tygra said pointedly. He stood up, kicked out the grate, and jumped. Whip lashing the air, he triumphantly called, "ThunderCats, ho!"
Felline closed her eyes, breathing deeply around the sudden prickling in her sinuses. She was scared. She was exhausted. She wasn't going to let her friends down. Drawing the gunblade, she leaped after Tygra and touched down on her toes, knees bending to absorb the impact.
"Keep them from the Sword!" the shriveled figure on the dais cried.
At once, the lizard-priests moved to intercept, but they were unarmed, clearly not warriors. Felline kicked one in the stomach, whisked around, and grabbed another by his oddly hot arm. Twisting down and then back up, she sent him somersaulting away, where he blundered into his fellows like a cannonball through a wooden fence. All around, the reptilian priests were falling to the swift ferocity of the cats.
"You were fools to come here," Mumm-Ra rasped angrily.
The next thing she knew, Felline was engulfed by his dark sorcery. The purple lightning seized her like thousands of fiery pins. It was pain unimaginable, instantly unbearable, and it lasted for eons.
She wondered if she was dying. With the screams of her friends drilling into her ears, she silently pleaded for the pain to stop. Eventually and to her surprise, it did, leaving a buzzing black numbness crowding out her thoughts.
"No more delays! Take them to the cells," Mumm-Ra commanded. "I'll deal with them once I destroy the Sword."
His words broke against the blackness, waves against the sand. They were gritty around the edges, hard to hold. Felline fought them, her cheek pressed into the floor.
Lizards lifted her onto their round shoulders. The floor beneath her cheek tilted and fell away, taking her stomach with it.
Faintly, from somewhere far away, she heard WilyKit murmur, "Bought him some time."
"Bought who some time? There's no one coming to save us," WilyKat groggily replied.
The sound of his voice was sad, and it grew fainter; Felline was being carried away. She surrendered to unconsciousness.
A/N: I will be uploading a new Bonus Theater very soon, before publishing the next CCv2 update. It isn't a giftfic this time, but an extra scene of my own that can't be told within the events of this chapter. It should be read right after this and before the next update, if read at all. :3
Reviewer Thanks! Darwin (Thank you, chica!), The Night Whisperer (How's this? :3), Heart of the Demons (Thank you! Check back around Friday, okay? lol), Mooncloudpanther (Gosh. Thank you so much! *blush*), KelseyAlicia (Indeed!), CaptainCommanderLucy (Thank you!), Momochan77 (I am so happy you liked it! I like angst. I haven't been writing near enough of it lately, lol), and Blacktiger93 (I don't know for sure! I'd like him to, but it also seems like a super-awkward thing to talk about - by the way, I just spent all night hanging out with someone who looks like you, but isn't you. hahaha!). Thank you so much for the reviews, guys! Please keep them coming!
Have a wonderful day, my darlings,
Anne
