Pumyra clenched her fists. "We're going to let a door stop us?"
She waited, but nobody came up with any better ideas. She frowned, turned, and took off back down the corridor, her bare feet padding on the metal floor in a steady rhythm.
"Where's she going?" Lion-O wondered.
"Who knows?" Tygra said. "But I bet she brings back trouble."
Felline looked at them. Lion-O made no move to follow Pumyra, so she did.
"Hey!" he said, but she didn't stop. Getting the Stone was so important to the survival of Third Earth that she wasn't about to sit around and wait for the universe to put it in her king's hands. The birds were not going to help them, and had been borderline hostile since the Feliner had entered their airspace. The sooner Lion-O got what they came for, the sooner they could leave. She skidded around the corner a second after Pumyra's ponytail whipped out of sight.
Pumyra heard her coming and dropped into a fighting crouch. When she saw who it was, however, she straightened with a grin. Felline had a pretty good idea of where Pumyra was going: If they needed a passcode, then there was one animal sure to have it.
Together, the lioness and the snow leopard followed their noses into the high-end residential section of Avista City, whose opulence put Thundera's first quarter to shame. The homes, yards, and public areas overflowed with every conceivable convenience; automatic doors, moving walkways, interactive screens, different colored lights that denoted things like yield, do not pass, or one-way only. Little floating containers sucked up trash and wayward dirt, and hovering carts followed birds home with their shopping.
Pumyra and Felline kept to the shadows, taking detours through the ventilation system whenever they could. At last, they caught up to Vultaire in an atrium, wet and lush, its tropical trees baking in the concentrated daylight that shone through the glass walls.
Pumyra slithered into the greenery, slinking along on her belly in the moist dirt. Felline crawled into the undergrowth on the other side of the path, using the trunks of the tall, hairy trees as cover. She could see Pumyra plainly through the leaves, autumn stealing through summer, but Vultaire hadn't noticed a thing. She reminded herself that vultures were not predators, but scavengers. For all his gloating about his superiority, he was woefully unequipped to deal with a cat on the prowl. Pumyra's eyes, however, were locked on her prey.
The prefect must have heard the news of their escape. No longer stately, he stomped right past Felline's hiding place without glancing left or right. His ugly face was screwed up in a scowl and two armed ravenmen marched along in his wake. Pumyra silently emerged through the bushes. She nocked a pebble and took aim.
She fired.
The missile cracked into a ravenman's helmet, knocking him off his feet. Felline rushed at the second, springing up between his spear and his body before he noticed her, and slammed the heel of her palm under his steely beak. With a strangled cry, he collapsed like his partner.
Vultaire turned bulging yellow eyes on her, fury tightening his jaw. While he was distracted, Pumyra pounced.
The lioness closed her fingers around the vulture's long neck, thrust her shoulder blades into his chest, and yanked his head under her armpit. She bared the claws of her free hand and held them poised above his evil yellow eyes.
"You're coming with us!" she rasped.
His skinny, overlong arms flailed, but Felline had picked up one of the spears and turned its crackling tip into his face. The air left his lungs in a gust. He raised his arms, hands slack in the air, and allowed Pumyra to drag him hunchbacked, wings akimbo, back the way he had come.
They found Panthro still unsuccessfully punching random codes into the dial.
"Maybe we should get off this city before they throw us off," he groused.
At the sound of Vultaire's coughing and spluttering, Panthro turned. His jaw dropped.
"Pumyra!" Lion-O exclaimed. She had latched both hands around the prefect's throat to haul him along. "What are you doing?"
Vultaire gave a pained cry as Pumyra dragged him the last few steps and then forced him to his knees. He didn't dare fight her, for Felline was ready to prod him in the right direction with her stolen spear.
"We need passcodes?" Pumyra grunted. "Well, this is our passcode."
"You're all a bunch of savages," Vultaire managed to get out.
"Yes, we are," Felline said without rancor, knowing that agreeing would put Vultaire off more than arguing. She tightened her grip on the spear's shaft. "Don't worry, we'll be out of your feathers soon enough."
Pumyra showed him her claws, which gleamed in the low light. "Now, you being so refined and all, you do know how to open a door for a lady."
Vultaire's eyes glittered maliciously. "It would be my pleasure."
Pumyra released him. He massaged his throat, and then stepped up to the dial. His knobbly fingers danced like spider legs, punching out a long, complicated pattern around the dial. After a moment, the door itself beeped, and then the two halves split and recessed into the walls.
Lurid green light spilled into the corridor. The entire room beyond was aglow. A blast of refrigerated ozone hit Felline full in the face.
A bridge led to a platform. A column of green-white pierced the center. On a pedestal set in the middle of the beam, something small floated. The object was flat and circular, about the size of Felline's hand. It looked, she thought, like a polished computer chip, like the kind that helped control all the systems in the ThunderTank and the Feliner. It chattered and chirped in the language of machines. Precise lines of light pulsed across its metallic surface, splitting off, running parallel. Vultaire's expression was unreadable.
"Incredible," Cheetara breathed.
"You call us snobs," Vultaire said, his voice echoing in the empty room, "yet the cats have always looked down on others, taking whatever they wished."
"That's how cats were," Lion-O corrected him, "but I've been working to change that."
"By stealing our Stone!" Vultaire said.
"We're borrowing it," Cheetara said, her sunset eyes steady. "Once the Stones are united, we'll be able to take down Mumm-Ra."
Vultaire peered at her through one baleful eye. "Did your feral minds ever stop to ask why the Stones were scattered in the first place?"
"Um, we just figured they were, you know, lost," Tygra said.
Suddenly uneasy, Felline let the spear sag.
"Not lost," Vultaire said. "Separated, by our ancestors."
Felline closed her eyes. Memory transported her into the Book, to the day the skies fell.
The Black Pyramid glowed with heat, burning as it penetrated the atmosphere of the green planet below. A storm of cosmic proportions swallowed both planet and smallest moon in a cage of electricity, and the ship caught the backlash.
Vultaire was still talking. "Thousands of years ago, after Mumm-Ra's ship crashed, his animal servants were free to inhabit Third Earth."
The Black Pyramid sat in its bed of sand, no longer black but tan, somehow resisting the desert's encroachment.
"The question remained, what to do with the four Stones of Power."
The Stones swirled around each other in a galactic dance: the red cube with its slit pupil, the pink shard with its orbiting points of light, the chirping disc, and a smoky blue diamond. They disappeared in a blaze of light.
"They were deemed too powerful for any one species to possess –"
Hundreds of animals, cats and dogs and birds and jackalmen and elephants and monkeys and lizards, all wearing the yellow jumpsuits of Mumm-Ra's slaves, all arguing and overflowing with suspicion and distrust.
"– so it was decided each would be given to an animal race that would protect it –"
A hand closed around the grip of the Sword of Omens, in which the Eye of Thundera glowed red.
"– meaning the strong would get stronger, and the weak –"
Jackalmen, lizards, and monkeys stared with sullen eyes at the new cat king while the red light of the Eye washed over them like a tidal wave of blood.
Felline opened her eyes.
"Well, we know what became of them," Vultaire finished delicately.
The staff sagged further in Felline's grip, its crackle going out. She had known this. The Book had shown it to her. But she, like Lion-O, had not revealed this secret to the others, who gazed at Vultaire, apparently thunderstruck.
Vultaire put his fists on his hips. "The cats, of course, chose to keep the War Stone."
"And the birds took the Tech Stone," Lion-O parried.
"While the other animals feared and shunned Mumm-Ra's technology," Vultaire haughtily said, "we Avistans embraced the Tech Stone's power, and built all that you see here."
Behind him, the Tech Stone continued to revolve, chirping to itself. Felline couldn't take her eyes off it.
"Let's unhook this thing and get outta here," Lion-O said, so tense the fur along his bare shoulder stiffened.
Vultaire forestalled him with a finger in the air. "I'm afraid you can't take the Stone."
"You don't get it," Pumyra said, exasperated. "We're not asking anymore."
"And again, you fail to grasp simple concepts," Vultaire snapped. "The Tech Stone generates anti-gravity emissions that keep the entire city afloat."
In the beginning, before the Fall of Thundera, these words would have meant less than nothing to the cats.
Cheetara frowned, working through what he'd said. "You mean if we take it –"
"It will only be moments before this whole place crashes to the ground like a rock," Vultaire finished for her, cruelly matter-of-fact.
In an instant, the mood changed. All this time, and not one of them had realized what taking the Stone meant. All this time, and now Vultaire finally revealed why he wouldn't give up the Stone.
All this time, the ThunderCats had been trying to destroy Avista City and everyone who lived in it.
"Why didn't you tell us this from the start?" Felline demanded. She threw the spear aside in disgust.
"Why should I have to explain to you why I would not give you what was not yours?" Vultaire sniffed.
Panthro and Lion-O looked at each other. Cheetara and Tygra did the same.
Pumyra – there was no sharing glance, no look of understanding between her and Felline. She started forward determinedly.
Lion-O caught her wrist before she'd taken two steps.
"We can't," he said.
"But we have to." Pumyra turned and put her hand over his. "For our people."
"Mumm-Ra sacrificed a whole galaxy to get what he wanted. I won't do the same," Lion-O insisted.
Pumyra's expression went from beseeching to furious faster than a blink. She shoved Lion-O away from her. "If you won't make the tough choices, I will!" she cried in her raspy voice.
She sprinted toward the pedestal.
"Pumyra! No!"
She knocked Vultaire aside and launched herself at the Tech Stone, hand outstretched. Before she could close her fingers around it, electricity engulfed her. She screamed, incandescent, and then dropped to the floor. The chirping Stone slowly revolved, uncaring, unknowing.
"Oops," Vultaire said. He scrubbed a claw into his bald scalp. "Did I forget to disarm the electric shield?"
Felline tried to go to her friend. Crying warnings, ravenmen flooded the room, both on foot and in the air. They surrounded the cats, cutting her off from Pumyra. Felline backed away. The stolen spear was out of reach beyond the taloned feet of a raven. They could fight, but they weren't going to win. Not with these odds. Not this far from the ground. And Pumyra . . . in the bright green light, she looked dead.
The pigeon, Horus, walked in smugly. He had obviously been monitoring surveillance to the Stone's chamber, which was why Vultaire had agreed to open the door. A perfect trap.
Vultaire raised his hand and ordered, "Now, Horus, take this trash, and throw them off this city."
A/N: I'm so tired, guys. Started a new job last week and anxiety hasn't been letting me sleep! Anybody else have this problem? Still, another chapter for you, 'cause I love you all so much!
Reviewer Thanks! Momochan77, KelseyAlicia, Heart of the Demons, Moonlightdeer, AndrianaWarrior7, The Night Whisperer, Sian8Cookies, Bookl0ver1998, and St4rHunter.
Hugs to all,
Anne