For centuries, we've looked down and watched the cats rule through your War Stone, seeing you pit nations against each other so they might never rise against you . . .
. . . the cats have always looked down on others, taking whatever they wished.
How sickening, to think that Vultaire had been right about the cats all along. They hadn't changed. Not in hundreds of years.
Now, here, in a trash heap, the last of them were going to pay for it.
"Well, this stinks," Tygra said.
"That distinct aroma is coming from the refuse drop," Vultaire said from two stories above their heads, safe on a platform that led back into Avista City. Hanging above him, the incinerator which would normally reduce everything to inorganic items and char was dark and cold. "This is where we dispose of our trash."
"Let us go. Now!" Panthro growled.
Vultaire raised one hand. "Normally, we'd return guests to the ground by airship, but when they engage in kidnapping and acts of sabotage against our fair city, we use this."
He lowered his hand.
Horus, though out of sight, cooed. A lever was thrown. A massive crank started up. The piles of scrap and garbage under Felline's feet shuddered, dropping her a couple of inches. Beams of daylight pierced the gloom from below, bringing with them wind that whistled through the cracks. Lion-O and Tygra stared upward in utter disbelief.
They had been escorted straight here after their capture in the Stone Chamber. They had no idea if the Feliner, the twins, or Snarf were okay. Pumyra had awoken in the refuse drop with the rest of them.
Then the trash began to move.
Chugging, the curved bottom of the chamber split into panels. The trash slid down the smooth sides, but slowly. The cats began to climb, hands and feet grasping at chunks of scrap as it passed, never rising, but not yet falling.
"You can't do this to us!" Cheetara cried.
"Yeah!" Panthro put in, wading through the trash more than climbing over it. "We'd much rather be shot!"
Felline felt like she was running up the avalanche that had nearly buried her, Tygra, and Lion-O in the mountains. One moment of hesitation, one misstep, and she would fall. Out of the city. Out of the sky. How long would it take before she landed? She couldn't forget the shape the scrap had been in after plummeting to Third Earth – mangled, flattened, torn. Hopeless as it was, she kept climbing.
Unrelated to the dumping process, around the room, circular, dull red lights began to flash. Barely heard over the screeching, tumbling scrap, a siren began to blare.
With a cry, a ravenman flew onto the platform. "Sir, we're detecting a fleet of ships."
"Order every pilot to the sky cutters," Vultaire said, the merest trace of unease in his voice, covered up by bluster. "Whoever they are, they have no chance against the technology of Avista."
"Vultaire, you know who this is," Lion-O called desperately. "It's Mumm-Ra, and he's coming for your Power Stone!"
"And if you want to have a chance against him, you're going to need a few feral barbarians on your side!" Pumyra rasped.
Vultaire considered her from his perch. The seconds ticked away. Felline began to run out of trash to grab.
"I always said the enemy of my enemy is my friend," he mused.
He raised his hand again. Cooing, Horus pushed the lever the other way, as if it made no difference to him if he killed a few people today or not. Clanking and groaning, the panels closed, lifting the cats back to safety. Felline collapsed to her hands and knees, breathing heavily.
Once everyone's heart rate had slowed to normal, Pumyra approached Lion-O. His posture was anything but inviting. Hurt shone in her autumn eyes.
"I wanted to tell you –" she said, faltered, and then lowered her gaze to his feet. "I'm sorry. My actions in the Stone Chamber . . . were – brash."
"You almost got us killed, Pumyra," he said quietly. "I need to know. Do I have your loyalty?"
Pumyra straightened. The old scowl was back in place, lowering her thick eyebrows, pulling her glossed lips into a sullen pout. In a monotone, she replied, "I serve my king and master."
It was one of the strange things she said sometimes. Like she had reverted to the half-feral slave of the Pit, making obeisance to her jailers. Felline thought Pumyra had moved beyond that, and it made her sad to hear it now. None of the others seemed inclined to forgive her, at least not while they were still knee-deep in garbage. They left her standing there with stiff shoulders, slack hands, and bowed head. Felline, though troubled by how far Pumyra had been willing to go to procure the Stone, was nevertheless partly to blame for their predicament, yet they weren't ostracizing her. She got up, brushing off her fur. She wanted to say something but couldn't think of what.
Pumyra gave her a bleak look. "Keep your eyes open, Felline," was all she said before she climbed out of the dump after the others.
..::~*~::..
The kittens weren't in the Feliner. In fact, the kittens weren't anywhere.
While the birds grudgingly sent for the cats' confiscated weapons, Lion-O and Pumyra climbed out of the airship. Snarf appeared. He twined happily around his master's ankle.
Lion-O knelt and scratched his tufted chin. "Where are they, Snarf?"
"Nya!" Snarf said. "Snya snya."
"Of course," Lion-O whispered, eyes widening. "Their hoverboards!"
"What's that, now?" Pumyra asked. She eyed him as though fearing for his sanity.
Felline grinned. Pumyra hadn't been around Snarf long enough to witness the special bond between him and Lion-O.
"Kit and Kat are fine. Trust me," Lion-O said, straightening up. He caught Pumyra's look and smiled. "Don't worry about them. We have a job to do."
He pointed. Though no one had wanted to believe it, he had been right. In the sky, out of the towering thunderheads, flecks of black appeared. The flecks flew like a swarm of insects, growing larger with each passing second. The lizards had improved their snakehead hovercraft, upgrading them into zipcraft with turbines and low-mounted cannons. The crews on the decks stood ready, bayonets bristling at the ends of their rifles, the red lenses of their goggles winking in the sun.
"How does Mumm-Ra keep finding us?" Tygra asked in frustration.
"No doubt you led him right to us," Vultaire said.
"That's impossible," Cheetara said.
Pumyra got between the large vulture and the cleric. "All that matters now is keeping the Stone away from him," she urged them.
"We'll defend the perimeter," Lion-O told Vultaire.
"And we'll defend the skies," Vultaire replied.
He marched toward his landing pod, but then he stopped with a strangled squawk. His sleek, jet and crimson airship was already rising into the cold air. Tygra was aboard. He looked down at Vultaire.
He smirked.
"What are you doing in my ship?" Vultaire snapped.
"Since this one's dented, Prefect, I'll take it." Tygra sealed the cockpit and lifted off.
The wind and exhaust smacked into Vultaire, who couldn't keep his wings furled against the gale. Dark feathers swirled off him in a miniature hurricane.
He clenched his fists, watching as his precious ship soared away from him. "Cats."
They only had a few minutes to scramble the sky cutters and take their positions. Felline couldn't worry about Tygra's behavior right then. If they were going to pull this off, then they needed some coordination with the fighters in the air. Then it came to her: The control tower. The surveillance system. That was where she needed to be.
Pumyra and Panthro had already claimed the two large guns perched like sentinels on the edge of the deck. Cheetara stood back, Viragor's staff ready for the inevitable landing parties. Lion-O took his place at the fore. Tygra looped the city in Vultaire's ship, waiting for Vultaire and his ravenmen to bring the small, bird-headed sky cutters out of the bays.
Lion-O, when Felline told him her plan, nodded without looking at her. He was too busy losing count of the ships converging on Avista. He thrust his fist into the Gauntlet of Omens, and then held the Sword straight out in front of him. "Keep them off this city!" he yelled. "ThunderCats, ho!"
The War Stone released a beam of red energy wide enough to swallow the Feliner. It consumed the first wave of craft, which looked like laden bombers. They exploded down the line, black smoke and yellow fire spinning through the air. From behind and slightly below, a second wave of zipcraft zoomed through the cover of smoke, heading straight for the landing pads. Pumyra and Panthro opened fire.
Felline tripped over Snarf as she headed back into the city. She didn't spare much thought for him. Her goal was the Chief Staff Officer.
"Horus!" she cried. She elbowed aside a few birds, surprisingly insubstantial under their drapes of sumptuous cloth. She saw the steel-colored pigeon turn, blinking his small yellow eyes. He stood with a flock of his peers, all of whom stared out the windows in perfect comfort and total unconcern.
Horus made a cooing noise in his throat, but he did not otherwise speak.
Felline approached. "We have to support the squadrons from inside the city. We can't let the outer defenses fail."
"They will not fail," Horus said. He turned from her, showing her the back of his smooth-feathered head.
"I've thought that. So many times." Felline hurried in front of him, blocking his view. "Mumm-Ra is out there. Controlling his fleet. Directly connected to every single ship and craft. You need to do the same."
"Prefect Vultaire is in charge of the fleet," Horus said, untouched by the muffled pounding that was Pumyra and Panthro firing the deck guns. A metallic patter like rain caressed the window, debris from demolished zipcraft.
"Prefect Vultaire doesn't have eyes in the back of his head," Felline said through clenched teeth.
"Your advice is unwanted, cat," Horus said. His voice was as soft and soothing as a coo, slightly monotone. "Prefect Vultaire will give us orders when it is time."
The birds shifted, wings and tails rustling, clicking their beaks in disapproval.
Felline didn't care. "Do you exist only to do Vultaire's bidding?" she snarled, advancing on the bird whose hand had nearly killed her less than an hour ago. Whose face had betrayed no emotion other than pleasure at doing the prefect's bidding
He backed away from her, looking unsettled now. His feathers rose and fell, no longer smooth.
Felline stomped after him, tail lashing. "My friends are out there, risking their lives to save yours. You have will, Chief of Staff. You have choice. You have authority. Now use them!"
To underline her point, at least one lizard bomber burst through the defending barrage to unleash its payload on the city, which rumbled and shuddered. Horus glowered at her as though it were her doing. His fellow birds couldn't seem to hold still, shifting their feet, nattering through their beaks, as the rumbling shudders continued.
Horus turned and began to walk away.
"You may observe," he said sullenly over his shoulder. "The moment you interfere, you will be thrown off this city."
"That's not the first time I've heard that today," Felline muttered, hardly daring to believe that he had listened to her. She fell into step behind him until he punched in a complicated passcode and led the way into the control tower.
A/N: Wow. It has been nearly a year since I last updated this story. Is anyone still here? I hope so, because the legend of the ThunderCats lives on! Right? Something like that.
A brief overview of my year: Got a new job last January. Still rocking that job. Go, me! Finally broke through the writer's block that told me I was a fool to start this project, because all the words seemed overused, especially since this final episode was so omniscient and I had chosen a limited POV. I struggled for so long to do the episode justice from Felline's POV, without cutting out too many of the cuter aspects (like everything about Snarf, or even Tygra and Cheetara flirting, sigh) or putting her in the way like some deus ex machina nonsense. I hope I succeeded. I hope you enjoy this submission. There will be three more to end this book. They're finished and ready to go. And then. And then! I've already written quite a bit on the third book! It is my heartfelt wish that you will continue to the end with me. :3 I miss you all so much!
Reviewer Thanks! Momochan77, Darwin (twice), The Night Whisperer, KelseyAlicia, Heart of the Demons, seeds of destruction, booklover2098, LXS, AndrianaWarrior7, Sian8Cookies, St4rHunter, Guest, Blacktiger93, and Night Neko-Jin. You are my light, my inspiration, and my joy! Cheesy, I know, but true. ;3 I'm ready to do this thing, so please review!
Forever yours,
Anne