They stygian darkness was actually a comfort as she charged forward, seeking that tiny spark which would lead her to Lion-O. It hid nothing from her as she quested ahead with her sixth sense as best as she was able. Alluro and Mumm-Ra had not counted on them mounting a resistance such as this or, if they had, they'd believed her own abilities would prove of no use.
I love it when they underestimate me, Cheetara thought as she plunged deeper into the black abyss.
She awoke, shivering and nude on the stone tiles which were caked with fresh blood. Leanna jolted upright and cast wild eyes about. Each stone tile was coated in blood inches thick, sticking to her as she rose. The circle of pale light did nothing to dispel the illusion of infinite space about her.
"Hello?" she called. No echo returned to her.
(Over here.) Leanna's feet left the blood-soaked floor for a moment and nearly spilled her on landing. She glanced up to see a full-length mirror hanging in space ahead of her. Her skin felt as if it wanted to leap from her bones more and more with each step she was helpless to take. Thick blood splashed beneath her feet, worming up between her toes and setting her stomach roiling.
Oh, Jaga, it's warm, she thought as her feet sent up crimson splashes. She saw in the mirror herself, then...
"Oh, please, no," she pleaded as her reflection warped into a form both familiar and alien. Fully grown, Lion-O emerged from the reflective surface and leered down at her.
"Look at you," he said. "My, sis, how you've grown."
"SHIT!" Pumyra shouted as Lion-O's alpha waves spiked yet again. "REPORT!"
"Synch is at ninety percent!" Tygra yelled back, his eyes glued to the monitors which measured the alpha patterns of both Lion-O and Cheetara.
"TOO SLOW! Damnit... Ten CCs of..." Lion-O bucked on her half of the bed, bruising showing on her throat as choking sounds struggled past her throat. Pumyra tried to tell herself they didn't resemble hand prints.
"NINETY-SEVEN PERCENT!" Tygra shouted.
Cheetara, she thought, if you have a miracle up your sleeve, STOP FUCKING AROUND AND USE IT!
Lea stared at him and beckpedaled in fear, her feet sending up splashes of blood. Lion-O did not slow his approach. She felt his eyes taking in the sight of her, nearly raping her with his eyes.
"I remember spying on you once, at the waterfall," he said, his words twisting her guts with horror. "I saw you and wondered why you were so different from me. Y'know. There." She shrank from his hands, covering herself as best she was able and igrnoring the blood splashing beneath her feet. Jumbled thoughts filled her mind, all fighting to gain release. "If I knew then what I know now," Lion-O said wistfully before a hand snaked out to tweak her right breast. Lea screamed in pain, shock, and fear. Her male avatar only laughed.
"Nowhere to run," he said. "Nowhere to hide, now that you know the truth. Now that you can't deny that you stand in my blood."
"...this isn't real..." she muttered, her voice weak. Dischordant symphonies of voices wailed in her mind, their messages drowning in one another as her sanity took blow after blow.
Who am I? she asked in her mind, her last fading refuge. She ran, as fast as her feet could carry her, splashing again and again in her brother's blood until he appeared before her again.
"Still trying to vanish into your fantasy," Lion-O said. "Your escape from me."
"Get away..."
"Not happening," Lion-O said as he stepped toward her. Each forward splash of his feet in the blood (oh, the BLOOD!) was answered by her own backward shuffle. "I've wanted to talk to you for the longest time, dear sister."
"You're not Lion-O," she said, her voice gaining strength despite the hammering storm of terror and self-doubt. "You're NOT!"
"I gotta give it to you," he said. "You're right. I'm not actually Lion-O."
"Then who are you?!"
"The part of you that you've spent most of your life running away from," he replied with a self-satisfied smirk. "Guilt. Self-hate. The knowledge that you were responsible for your brother's death."
"That was an accident..." Faint stirrings of images teased her mind, both real and unreal. The line between fact and fiction was rapidly blurring, the process Dr. Ro had begun gathering momentum in the manner of an avalanche.
"If some core part of you didn't believe that," the impostor began, "then the past years would have played out far differently. Let's take a look."
Infinite darkness was replaced with morning sun and stone tiles lay in place of a river of blood. She heard the muted sounds of grief from the ThunderCats who had gathered on the stone platform before a fountain which burbled with falling water from a dozen spigots hidden in the upturned hands of the maidens carved from weather-smoothed stone. Their faces, frozen in supplication, stared sightlessly out as the water fell from between their fingers in the manner of tears to land in the shallow pool at their feet. Resting before it was a coffin whose black wood gleamed with polish and the insignia of Thundera's Nobility. She tread lightly about, gawking openly at the mourning ThunderCats in attendance as Claudis stood before the box bearing the body of his son. It sat on a velvet-draped altar, a sad and lonely testament to a life cut tragically short.
They were all younger than she remembered. Panthro, then Tygra. She looked at her weeping father, Jaga soon kneeling next to him and draping a comforting arm about his shoulder. She saw Cheetara and froze for a moment, staring. Images briefly flooded her mind, of warmth and love and a night spent together, then vanished only to leave a lingering trace behind. Next to the Cheetah, though, Lea saw herself. Behind the well of tears was something disturbing.
"I don't remember this..."
"And why should you?" the voice of Not-Lion-O said from behind. Lea refused to look at him, focusing her eyes on the bejeweled combs in her younger self's mane of crimson hair. "This is where it all started. When you began to bury yourself."
"No..."
"Look at yourself," his voice said from just behind her right shoulder, close enough for his breath to tickle her ear. "That's right," he murmurred as her eyes slowly slid to those of her younger self. "You see it now?"
"No..." Weaker, now, she felt the flood begin to breach the dam of her remaining vestiges of control.
"Yes. That glimmer in your eyes." Hands clamped down on her shoulders, tight as vices. "That's where it all began."
"I don't believe you..."
"Oh, you do. Remember? You'd thought it more than once. 'Why should he rise to the throne? Why not me?'"
"No..."
"Oh, of COURSE you never entertained those thoughts for long, but they came back to bite you in the ass, now didn't they?" The impostor Lion-O slid into her view, his hands still maddeningly on her shoulders. "Especially now. With him dead, you asked yourself if you might be responsible. Le GASP!" he said with an exaggerated air of drama, "you didn't know!" His grip on her shoulders instantly tightened, vice-like, drawing a shriek of pain from her lips. He lifted her without apparent effort and the pressure on her shoulders vanished just before she was flung through the air. Her back met the ground, sliding across the grass from the remaining momentum. She lay there, her head threatening to burst from the pressure of conflicting memories and raw emotion. She clenched her teeth nearly to the point of cracking them, some inner spark refusing to let the cry for mercy escape her lips.
"There is only one escape from me," the impostor Lion-O said in a voice like silk. "Only one escape from all the pain. All the misery. You'll accept it, in time."
"Indeed she will," snarled a voice that shone like the sun on her heart. Lion-O's face contorted into a mein of stark surprise. Cheetara turned about, her look of anguish replaced with one of unbridled fury. The softness of youth was replaced with a woman in full bloom and towering rage. With a primal scream, a torrent of power burst from her which shattered the scene of her brother's funeral like fragile porcelian. The image of Lion-O burst into fragments as well.
"Dr. Ro?" she said weakly. Her mind was still fogged and sluggish, her thoughts slow to form. "Allu Ro... Alluro...?"
Cheetara glared daggers at Alluro, letting the power simmer beneath the iron control of her will. She knew she was at a disadvantage, a horrible one at that as she felt the power of Mumm-Ra's magic boosting Alluro's own psychic abilities to levels she had only felt from master psionics on Thundera, yet she stood firm. She had once chance to counter Alluro's edge. She could not show any weakness. Alluro's own over-confidence was key to tipping the odds in her favor.
"Oh, well done, well DONE!" he cheered, clapping. "To think you snuck in here without my knowing. Oh, and that ENTRANCE! You, my dear, have a real flair for the dramatic."
"I'm going to tell you once. Get away from her."
"And I shall answer you once. No." Alluro locked his eyes on hers and the power of Mumm-Ra washed over her in a foul tide of thought. She tightened her defenses, forming a shell about her mental self. "As I thought," he said. "You came here alone. So very brave. So very stupid." He stepped slowly forward in the white void as though a solid floor was beneath their feet.
"Lion-O, you have to listen to me!"
"She can't really hear you. I've already established my dominance in her mindscape which puts her and - by proxy - you, at my mercy." Onyx tendrils snaked out of the nothingness, wrapping about Lion-O's neck, wrists, ankles, and waist before jerking her limp form upright.
"LET HER GO!"
"Not happening," Alluro replied, sing-song. "Your dear Lion-O is merely a puppet, now. I am in complete command here." The tendrils drew taut, jerking Lion-O upward into the white space of thought and out of sight. "I must thank you for coming," Alluo went on. "It will make breaking her mind SO much easier." Alluro vanished. Cheetara spun about, questing for Lion-O and for the direction of the Lunattak's first assault with her mind. The latter came swiftly enough.
Lion-O's tethered form dropped in a limp heap before her. And another. And another, until she was surrounded by them. Cheetara summoned the mental image of her staff from memory just before the cords wound about each tightened and snatched each Lion-O upright. Cheetara turned a slow circle, searching each with her mind. As one, each Lion-O was forced to reach behind their backs to pull out long, wickedly curved blades.
This, she thought, is going to be much harder than I thought...
