Felline crouched behind a boulder, her back to it, her goggles strapped in place and mapping vectors, her rifle in her hands and humming. The grass was cool, the sky overcast. WilyKat's striped brown head blended so well with the sandstone that if he didn't keep popping up to watch the approach of the war mechs, she probably wouldn't have known he was there. The machines seemed bigger than before, swinging arms that almost touched the ground, their camera pods resembling small heads between the broad shoulders, bristling all over with spikes and huge beam cannons.
She kept quiet and let Kat be. The kittens, like her, had survived Thundera's fall. They'd seen this kind of warfare. WilyKat was a clever, agile cub, and together, they might make it out of this alive.
She tried to keep her breathing in time with her heartbeats. Calm. Relaxed. Steady. Her ears swiveled, picking up on each scrape of clawed lizard feet, each boom of the ponderous war mechs'. Closer. Closer.
Someone stepped on a mine.
It was an ugly sound, the impressive crack not masking the rending of flesh and bone. Shockwaves groaned through the hill. Felline knew that sound. It brought Thundera back to her, the orange and black sky, the fires burning where there should only have been stone. Wincing, she touched the scar above her left eye. Her token, nearly hidden in her thick, white fur, of the night she lived. Today might finish what those missiles had started; today, she might rejoin her sister.
If she had a choice, she had much rather stay with the ThunderCats. She'd gone through too much to give it all up now.
More mines ripped the day asunder, chain explosions sweeping through mech and foot soldier alike. Briefly, Felline closed her eyes and knocked her head into the boulder to keep the fear at bay. The mines had broken the enemy's uniform advance, but not stopped it. The lizards continued through the smoke and dirt clogging the air.
Felline stood, took aim through the sudden frenzied numbers scrolling across her lenses, and began firing.
The goggles placed reticles over the pall that shivered in green and red pixels, tracking movement within the smoke. Felline kept steady pressure on the trigger, snapping off shots in quick succession, making the reticles jump spasmodically around, searching for new targets. A wild beeping started right before the vague shapes started shooting back.
Felline gasped as a laser clipped her cheek, feeling like the sting of frostbite, and a second beam left a deep cut on her arm. She dropped with a curse. Had she forgotten? The lizards wore the same goggles.
Neither wound was bleeding, made and cauterized in the same instant, but that didn't stop them from hurting. Felline clenched her fingers around her rifle, which gleamed in the low light. She hadn't had a chance to use the new features Ro-Bear Bob had installed before now. Grinning, she slid open a plate and pressed a few buttons.
When she threw herself against the boulder, the rifle lying across it, she came under a barrage of laser fire. Waiting for the target lock beep, she hunched down and pulled the trigger.
Beams of green-white, as thin as burning filaments, sprayed from the muzzle. They spun like a cone of light, slicing through dirt and dust, metal and flesh. Directing the spray toward the largest heat sources, Felline brought down several mechs, where they fell, exploded, and took out surrounding soldiers. The advance hesitated, probably analyzing this new attack, giving her the perfect opportunity to eliminate the first wave.
Although she didn't need to worry about her charge running low, for the thundrilium chip installed in the battery pack contained nearly limitless power, she did have to be careful of overheating. After thirty seconds, she shut off the beams and balled up behind her boulder before lizard shots could start chipping at it again.
Through the continued explosions, screams, and thuds of more lizard bodies hitting the dirt, someone laughed. Loud, raspy, and full of thick wetness.
She knew that laugh.
"A pitiable defense," General Slithe called. "Thundera fell in a day. This will only take moments!"
"Take the hut," General Grune commanded. "The cats are mine."
Felline chanced a glance around her boulder and saw Grune raise his spiked mace. With a growl and crackle, it spat crooked tongues of yellow lightning that sought out all of Panthro's carefully placed mines. One by one they blew while Felline cowered behind her boulder with her arms over her head. She could no longer see Kat, and she was in danger of losing her hearing as well. Showers of dirt and rock rained down on her. Grune moved methodically up the hill, destroying a mine with each step. Within a minute, perhaps two, he had moved past her.
"WilyKat!" Felline cried. She inhaled a bunch of dirt and started coughing. She got up and tried to run to his hiding place, waving her arms to dispel the cloying dust and smoke, not caring if the lizards could hear her. "Where are you? Kat!"
After she had pulled off her goggles, she saw him. The kitten was trying to lift a three-beam rifle as long as he was to his shoulder, wobbling under its weight. He didn't see the three grinning lizards sneaking up behind him while he took aim at a passing war mech. "Kat!"
He fired the rifle. Its triple beam was so powerful it lifted him clear off his feet and sent him rocketing into the trio behind him, knocking all three lizards senseless. Unbelievably, it also caused the mech to explode.
"Kat, get up!" Felline stood over the dazed cub and shot at two more lizards, one of which she missed. That one lurched forward, bayonet aimed at her stomach. She sidestepped it, grabbed the fins at the sides of his head, and brought her knee up as hard as she could. Several triangular teeth scattered over the uneven ground when he fell. WilyKat gave a sigh of relief when he got a good look at his handiwork.
"They're heading for the hut," Felline said. "We have to go. There's nothing more we can do here."
"Okay," Kat agreed. His flank whizzed out, its claw-hooks sinking deep into a charging lizard's thigh. When he yanked on the cord, the claws tore free, and the lizard folded in a gout of femoral blood, thrashing.
WilyKat and Felline ran as fast as the advancing army let them. It was sort of a hopscotch game, sprinting a few yards, stopping to fight, and then limping on again. When they reached the crumbling outer wall of the village, WilyKat dropped to all fours and raced off; Cheetara stood alone before the hut, staff braced against the horde of lizard soldiers closing on her. Felline sped up, hoping to catch up to Kat.
Something punched her right between the shoulder blades, sending her sprawling in the grass. Her rifle bounced away.
"And just where," chuckled a sibilant, liquescent voice, "do you think you're going?"
A lumpy shadow draped itself across her. She rolled over, teeth clenched on a scream. General Slithe lifted a warty, long-toed foot and brought it smashing down, but she rolled again and scrambled to her feet. Tail swelling, she hissed at him.
He hissed back, lips spreading in a pointy smirk. He wore a leather mask over his yellow eyes, but let his chin hang free like a wattle, his torn breechcloth held up by a pair of crossed, ragged leather straps. He, too, wore a red jewel centered on his flabby, white chest, but it wasn't Mumm-Ra's emblem; it was set in a horned skull.
"It's over, cat," he told her. "You're outnumbered, out-gunned, and I am going to enjoy ushering your filthy race into extinction, starting with you!"
He fired his gun, but she leaped out of the way, powering through the burn in her legs. She dodged and skipped until she reached her rifle. Swooping down, she scooped it up and fired back, and she was a better shot. She hit him on the wrist that wasn't covered with a metal bracer.
"Yeow!" he growled, shaking out his hand. They studied each other.
"I am going to hurt you for that, cat," he hissed, eyes narrowing. "You won't like it, but I will."
This close, Felline couldn't help but notice how different Slithe looked from his kinsmen. He was taller, more muscular, but also fatter. Like a mutant, his long arms resembled the arms of the war mechs behind him, which were powering up their beam cannons, preparing to blow away Cheetara and WilyKat. Squat legs brought him stalking closer, spiked tail wagging with each step. Felline fired at him, but he deflected it with the serrated knife clipped to his gun. She fired again, and again, but he kept coming, yellow eyes glittering malevolently, mouth splitting his warty face in two.
Something more than fear locked her in place and started a trembling in her knees. Slithe was so close, so wide, so powerful, and he was going to hurt her, as he'd promised. She fired one more shot that went uselessly high and then lashed out with the rifle itself.
Slithe closed long, knobby fingers around it and wrenched it out of her grasp. He then smashed it on a rock, shattering the stock and charge pack. With his other hand, the one she'd wounded, he slashed at her face.
Wildly, she threw up her arms. His knife opened a line of agony from her wrist to her elbow. Then he drove his fist into her unprotected stomach.
Her knees hit the ground with bruising force. She gagged over his sinewy green arm. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe. . . .
He latched his hand around her throat and lifted her so that her feet dangled. "Say goodbye," he crooned.
Dark spots clustered across his ugly sneer. Although Felline felt the tears streaming down her face, she couldn't fight him. Just as, so long ago, she couldn't fight her own father, not to protect her sister, not even to protect herself. Just as their mother had failed to protect them from Snow. Felline was no match for one of Mumm-Ra's generals.
The thought saddened her. She closed her eyes against the black spots.
He laughed and squeezed.
A beam cannon went off. Slithe's arm lowered, dragging Felline along the ground like a doll. Lashes wet, teeth clenched, she reached up and sank her claws into his scales, trying to wedge her fingers beneath his. His grip loosened, and then he dropped her.
Another cannon fired. Felline heard Cheetara say, "Thought you were going to meditate."
"We did," Anet replied. Through her swimming eyes, Felline stared up at the elephant, who was holding a war mech above his head as if the weight was nothing at all. His face, however, was uncharacteristically dark. "And this was the answer that came to us."
He heaved the war mech away, where it landed on another. Both went up in flames.
A long line of elephants approached, side by side, all male, large and strong. WilyKit rode on Aburn's shoulder. When the lizard army broke and ran before the elephants, Kit gleefully shouted, "You just woke a village of sleeping giants. ThunderCats, ho!"
Slithe watched in horror as his comrades were stomped flat beneath massive feet, kicked aside like flimsy green and blue toys, or outright fled before Aburn and the others.
"The elephants," he choked, having completely forgotten Felline, wheezing at his feet. "The elephants never fight!"
"Only rarely," Anet corrected him angrily. He raised his fists. "But when we do, we fight to win."
Faster than Felline believed possible, Anet took a swing at the malformed lizard. Quick as a snake, Slithe dodged. Anet tried to crush him beneath both fists, but again, Slithe slithered away. Grinning, the lizard zigzagged in and thrust the blade of his gun toward Anet's face. Anet gracefully moved aside and grabbed the gun. He ripped it from Slithe, sending the lizard spinning into the dirt. Then, still uncharacteristically frowning, he bent the gun in half and tossed it away like garbage.
Gasping, Slithe scrambled to his feet and bailed.
"Are you all right?" Anet asked Felline in his gentle accent. He offered her a hand, but she only needed the tip of one finger to help her upright.
"Panthro," she rasped through her sore, abused throat, and pointed.
Panthro and Grune were engaged in a death match near the abandoned ThunderTank. That was the only way she could think to describe the brutality of their duel, for their weapons had been discarded and they seemed unaware of anything going on around them. Each meaty thud of their fists connecting resonated in Felline's chest. They fought, and as they fought, they traveled over the broken ground, snarling and growling in absolute hatred. Eventually, they ended up in front of the glowing hut.
"What is that?" Cheetara exclaimed.
Anet had noticed it, too. He held out his arms, holding her, the kittens and Snarf, and Felline, back from the light. It intensified, the crystal singing nearing painful pitch.
It wasn't the light Anet was protecting them from, Felline realized. It was the wind.
A powerful wind, pulling on them with all the strength of Third Earth's gravity, sucking everything in front of the hut inside. Tygra and Lion-O appeared out of the light, running into the swirling debris, past the two battling generals. The brothers threw themselves forward, somersaulting to safety.
Neither Grune nor Panthro seemed to realize the danger they were in, determined to finish their fight. When Grune began to slip backward, however, he latched onto Panthro's arm. Both cats skidded toward the hut, grunting and straining against the wind. Grune seized Panthro's other arm just as his feet left the ground.
"Pull me free, Panthro!" Grune howled, anchored to the gray cat and therefore the Physical Plane. He was through the hut's door. Panthro struggled not to pass the lintel, but his feet kept sliding inexorably forward. "Pull me free, or we both die!"
An inch. Another. Panthro was inside the hut.
"What's happening?" WilyKat yelled.
"Panthro!" Felline shouted.
"Felline, stop!" Cheetara cried, but her hair was in her face, and she was helpless.
"I'm sorry, little one," Anet gently said, "but you must stay here." He curled a massive arm around Felline's middle, hugging her to him. He stood against the wind, more solid than a rock.
"Can't we do something?" Felline asked desperately.
"We can wait," Anet said.
Then they heard Panthro bellow, "Defeat of your enemy is worth any sacrifice!"
Grune began screaming. Wordless, furious, and terrified. With a horrible crescendo, the light engulfed the hut, turned blue-white, and then exploded.
Groaning, Felline picked herself out of the rubble. The others were doing the same. Immediately, she looked for Panthro.
He knelt in the ruin of the hut. At first, Felline thought that he'd escaped unscathed.
Until she noticed the glowing, blue-white light that circled his biceps just below the shoulders.
And that the rest of his arms were gone.
"Worth it," he rumbled, sweat beading up and rolling down his temples.
The ThunderCats ran to the general and reached him as he fell face first onto the stony ground and lay still.
A/N: Hello, my lovelies!
Reviewer Thanks! Heart of the Demons (Thank you! *huggles*), KelseyAlicia (Hee, thank you! :3), Momochan77 (Haha, I certainly hope this one was better. I'd had it in mind FOREVER and it was so hard to get to! Thank you so much :3), The Night Whisperer (*snort* Would you believe I had that exact same thought? LOL Thankies), Lady Aurora Nocturne (Yeah, I'm going with someone blabbed - Bastien just seems like the kind of guy in the know. LOL Was that unbelievable (in all seriousness)? Thank you so much for continuing to review! Oh, and the chapter names. I thought I was so clever, picking idioms that had to do with cats, but toward the end I ran out of ones that fit because so many mean the same thing. I'm going to have to abandon the idea in Volume 2 and come up with something else . . . GROAN), CaptainCommanderLucy (Thank you! :3), Mooncloudpanther (Aw, sweetie, I hope everything's okay now! *hugs* I couldn't agree more about Cheetara as Cleric breaking some kind of taboo with entering a relationship with royalty, and that it did kind of weaken her. I also agree that both Lion-O and Felline are still kind of malleable at this point and are growing up in different ways. However, I will plead patience and an open heart. I don't know much of how the story will go or end, but there are still thirteen more episodes to go, plus my version of season two. Hang in there with me? :3 Oh, and THANK YOU for always reviewing, because it just makes my day!), LeafeonLover (I'm with you! I'm a magic dreamer all the way. It's been a challenge to write someone as anti-magic as Felline, hee. Thank you for reviewing!), Blacktiger93 (Hey, you! Good to see you. :3 I'm so happy you like those moments, hee. Thanks for reviewing!), and keykeybaby6 (Thank you! :3).
Also, I simply must thank all of you who have recently favorited/followed CC. You're awesome sauce. X3
Forever Most Humbly Yours,
Anne
