Fall Of The Empire
Rating: T (for now.)
Disclaimer: I don't own this. If I did, the second season would have been out already, and I would be all over that like white on rice.
Author's Notes: Author's notes will be held at the end of this chapter. All commentary/notes/announcements will be down at the bottom!
Warnings: Nothing, except for stylistic things FF loves to om nom. Mild cursing. If you see anything with the first-person in it, it should be italicized. That is all. Present tense is how I transcribe eps, if you see any confusing verb tenses, tell me and I'll fix them!
. . . this text is here for a mysterious reason.
Lion-O exhaled a gusty breath of air as he rubbed at the back of his neck.
Before him, a menagerie of animals sat, some arguing, most talking, and even more sitting and staring awkwardly at their companions, unsure of how to approach their fellow Third Earth-dwellers. "Think of what you've gained," Kit had said, golden eyes sparkling, "The animals of Third Earth, fighting together for the first time!" Yeah, it was easy to put it that way, he supposed. To claim it as a victory, to look on the bright side, to not pretend that he'd lost serious ground for his cause.
Dropping his hand, he flexed them, and stared at his fingers. They were slightly red from the ferocious battle waged not but a few hours earlier, and his arms still ached from the sheer power it had taken to shove Mumm-Ra back. Not to mention his head was pounding from all the times the monstrosity had decided to zap them all with a few bolts of electricity. No, that wasn't what really bothered Lion-O. What bugged him, what haunted him. . .
"Why are you alone?" A voice asked.
Lion-O jumped, slightly startled, and whirled around. There, ascending the small bluff he'd chosen to secrete himself on, was Pumyra. She'd been an invaluable asset for the battle for Avista, even if she'd acted rashly. She was an excellent fighter, too. . . and pretty. Lion-O looked away from her before his mind wandered onto other thoughts of the puma and their times together, and instead chosen to stare out at the encampment of animals. Soon, he knew, they would probably disband and head back home. Unless they got to the next stone.
And the Book was dead as a doornail considering its location now. Not so much as a blinking light from the piece of technology, no matter how many times Lion-O asked it. He'd even taking to asking Omens, but the sword merely showed him a misty red cloud of color before closing the vision. Almost as if the sword were shrugging and saying, "I dunno where it is."
Sighing again, Lion-O plopped down on the closest rock and wrung his hands together, staring into empty space.
"I wanted to be alone. There's no reason to celebrate, and we all know it."
"That's not true." Pumyra countered, offering a rare, tender touch to his arm, "The kittens were right in saying that you've accomplished a great cause - the animals are united. Yes, we lost a stone, but Mumm-Ra only has one."
"Pumyra, did you see the power he wielded? With just a single stone? If he gets the last stone, I won't have enough power to beat him. He's right. I can't tap into the stone's power completely."
Pumyra seated herself next to him, her body so close he could feel its warmth.
"And you're just going to give up because you lost a single battle? There's still a war waging."
"I know. I know there is. But I can't help it. There's no more room for failure - there's only one more stone."
"Then we'll find it before he does." Pumyra said, her tone ringing with confidence.
"We can't have another betrayal." Lion-O said, his voice sounding pained, even to himself, "If we do. . ."
"She's gone." Pumyra said, tone flat. "Even if Mumm-Ra somehow managed to revive her, she's dead to us."
It was like a knife, plunged straight into his heart and then twisted. Lion-O schooled his expression into impassiveness, feeling Pumyra's watchful eye on him. He'd thought. . . Lion-O had. . . Two months ago, when they'd outed her, he'd felt her blood on his blade like it had branded his skin. Omens had vibrated, as if trying to tell him it was torn between wanting to hate her and take her back in. He'd watched those strange, too-round eyes cloud with tears, and then she'd ran away.
If she hadn't been a spy, she would have fought. It was what Lion-O had told himself. She would have said it was some elaborate lie or ruse pulled off by Mumm-Ra. But that still didn't explain the contents they'd read in that diary. The journal she'd always been busily sketching in, every day, cataloging events of the past and the future. Lion-O still remembered that night painfully. Pumyra had approached him, and had uttered the dreaded words:
"The human is Mumm-Ra's spy. And I can prove it."
She'd dragged him off into Dog City, where she'd retrieved a cloth-bound notebook, hidden carefully amongst the rocks so as not to be discovered. She offered it out to him wordlessly, and Lion-O had opened it. Imagine his surprise when he'd found Echo's journal in his hands, and he had protested, defending his friend's innocence. . .
But the things he had seen in that journal. . .
"She dropped it as she was leaving Dog City," Pumyra had explained, "I picked it up, glanced down, and saw the evidence. A clever ploy," The puma spat, "She kept it in plain view. She acted as though she were recording your journey. But look. Look. Here, she writes that she and Mumm-Ra are humans. And that she served under him."
And Echo had run away.
She hadn't fought.
She'd admitted it.
Over the course of two months. . . Lion-O had been able to deal with that. Yeah. Hard enough to believe on his own, but he'd come to terms with it. The way Echo had reacted to the news - Lion-O had been entertaining and playing with notions that she hadn't even known, and Mumm-Ra had been using her unknowingly as a proxy. Because there was no way that those bright blue eyes had lied to him when she'd sworn that she'd stay until the end.
He believed her when she'd cried for Jorma, when she chased the kittens around with washcloths to bathe them, or the times she and Panthro had sat the fire and discussed the best way to oil a sword and clean it. And back in Thundera, he'd believed her when she'd smiled up at him, revealing her useless, nubby teeth, and laughed as he explained his latest escape plan.
For a year, the human - the alien, the foreign creature - had become his best friend. Dearer to him even than his technology, and for a year, she'd been an escape.
But now. . .
Lion-O glanced down at his hands, imagining minute traces of her blood.
He. . .
He hadn't meant to run her through. He really hadn't.
It was a threat. He had not expected her to drop through the glass, to reach down and pick up the Technology Stone. . . and when he'd rushed over to her, the human had reached around for a gun. Instincts, battle-highs, and adrenaline had rushed through his brain, making everything fuzzy - but he'd seen her hand move. He'd watched as her eyes had crinkled, like she'd been smiling, and his body had moved without thinking.
He hadn't been aiming for the middle. He'd been aiming for the side. Just something to clip her side, to make her drop the stone.
She'd moved.
Or. . . He thought she had.
Lion-O clenched his hands together and bit the bottom of his lip, repeating that over and over in his mind. She'd moved. At the last second, she moved. I never meant to do that. It wasn't me.
He would remember if he meant to murder his best-friend-turned-spy. . . wouldn't he? He'd pick up the intention somewhere in his heart.
And oh, by Thundera, he'd been able to strike her with Omens, a sword that couldn't be used against a force of good. . .
A calloused hand laid on his own, and Lion-O looked up again. Pumyra was leaning in close to him, eyes softening.
"You did nothing wrong. And deep down, you know that. You are a great leader, Lion-O. . . and sometimes, leaders have to make difficult choices. And it's up to his followers to support him in those decisions."
And she kissed him.
Lion-O sat, rigid and shocked, as Pumyra's lips touched against his own. But then his eyes closed, and he relaxed. She was right. Pumyra was completely and absolutely right. He had to make a tough decision, and so long as she was there to help him through them. . .
Tap tap.
Separating from Pumyra, Lion-O was ready to unleash a tongue-lashing on the twins, preparing to dress them down like never before, but instead, his gaze fell, further and further, as he received another tap tap. Two brilliantly bright golden eyes blinked up at him, cogs and mechanisms whirring as the Berbil's hands moved and tapped against his leg again. Lion-O frowned, trying to place where he'd seen the Berbil before, and it clicked.
"You're Sunny." Lion-O said, tensing again.
If Sunny was nearby, did that mean Echo was too?
"Yes. Sunny look for Ro-E. Does lion-cat know where Ro-E is?"
For a long moment, it was quiet. Lion-O stared down at the Berbil, and next to him, Pumyra shifted. He lifted a hand, stalling her inevitable attack, and dropped it again slowly. If the Berbil was looking for Echo, then she wasn't there.
"Why are you looking for Echo?" Lion-O asked. Internally, he was proud of himself. His voice sounded cool and calm, totally unlike the emotional maelstrom raging in him.
Sunny quirked his head, servos whirring. "Ro-E need Sunny. Sunny cataloged reports of extreme medical duress. Ro-E normally with ThunderCat. . . Where is Ro-E?"
"She's been exiled." Lion-O replied, tone growing cold, "And if you're wise, you do best to do the same."
Anything even remotely related to Echo could be a potential risk. If Sunny was looking to insert himself into their camp to be a secondary spy for the human. . .
Sunny blinked up at him again, looked at him and Pumyra, and then, without another word, rolled up into a ball and took off. Lion-O watched him go, making sure to never take his eyes away from the Berbil as the robot rolled away into the crowd, speed to the outside of it. Pumyra laid a gentle hand on his own and squeezed.
"You did the right thing. It'll only get better from here."
Sunny rolled out of the camp, disappearing over the horizon.
"I hope you're right, Pumyra." Lion-O replied, squeezing in turn.
The sun set, gold glittering over their camp. . .
It's bringing an end to an era. . . Closing this chapter on my life.
She watched the sun, the blurry, golden sun, set. Its warmth washed over her, but she just couldn't stay comfortable. She felt permanently cold, like everything inside of her had been ripped out, and the void in her was just. . . frozen. Echo felt like there was nothing left. She was just a ball of walking, talking cotton. But. . . She'd always loved sunsets the most, hadn't she? Yeah. . . Yeah, she had. Once upon a midnight dreary, she remembered leaning against a rock railway and reclining in the sun, soaking up the rays, reminiscing that the sunsets were her favorite part about the days. . .
But times were different now.
One hand came up to numbly ghost over her bare stomach, which held a heavy amount of gauze bandages, tightly taped to prevent them slipping. She could feel Omens, jutting in and out of her, in and out, in an out, the sickening slide of metal into organs and skin. . . The hot, disgusting feel of blood pooling everywhere, chilling her clothes, making them stick to her. . .
And then warm, calloused hands pulling her from the jaws of death, providing her a place of requiem from the insanity of it all.
"The sun. . . doesn't it hurt you?"
Heavy, booted footsteps wandered over the podium to her, striding into the sunlight. Instantly, his skin began to blister, darkening and reddening, but if he was in any pain, Markata didn't show it. He just stood there, the sun gleaming in his black eyes.
"I can stand it. Besides, if it makes you happy lieutenant, then I'm more than pleased to let the sunlight fill this control room. . . Besides, it could use some airing out anyway."
Maybe he meant it as a joke. Or - or he seriously meant it. Either way, Echo honestly had no idea. She just sat there, on her hands and knees, and stared out at the setting sun. With every passing second, it dropped just a little more down the horizon. . . and eventually, it, too, passed into darkness. Echo closed her eyes and hugged herself, shivering at the chill that settle in on her skin. Markata began to heal, but he turned to her.
"It's time to begin. Are you scared, lieutenant?"
"No." She said. "I can hardly feel anything anymore."
Markata stepped over to her, and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. He squeezed. "It'll be over soon. And you'll understand what I tried to save you from."
"I feel like I betrayed. . . I betrayed everything. . . everyone. . . "
Her vision clouded over.
She smiled bitterly as she saw a film of tears cover her sight, but there was something else, too. . . a cloud of puffy smoke, quickly growing in volume and number. It wasn't dark, sinister, or acidic as the miasma she'd remembered it to be. It was just smoke, smelling of an incense she'd never smelled before. Echo sat there, tears rolling numbly off of her cheeks. She'd been doing that a lot since she'd woken up, but to be quite honest, she wasn't even sure why. There was no capacity for her to feel anymore.
Nothing but desolation, anyway.
"No. You came back to your kind. That's nothing to be ashamed of. And when this is complete. . . You'll see you were right to make this decision, lieutenant."
Quiet voices began chanting, and Echo felt a heavy pressure nestle over her skin as magic began to flood the room. She heard a rustle, and she looked up - there.
There, right there, her shadow stood, staring down at her from under the lip of her hood.
". . . I want closure." The shadow said, beginning to walk, circling around her. Echo felt like she was a small, tiny little rabbit, and the shadow was a wolf, ravenous for its first meal in years. . . and oh, she was just longing to sink her fangs into her body and eat her up.
"Closure?" Echo parroted, hands trembling.
"Closure." The shadow repeated. "I want you to sit there and give me closure. So think. Put it all together. Don't trust somebody blindly. Not even the captain."
"Ah, I was wondering what strange, glitchy creature was following you about. . . One of my theories was correct. Glad to finally meet you."
The shadow ignored Markata entirely, instead choosing to circle around Echo.
"What are you talking about?" Echo asked.
"How did you get here. Stop being stupid. Think!"
"Think about how I got here?"
"Things don't add up. You're not stupid. Put the pieces together."
"I. . . Are you telling me not to trust the captain? After all this? After everything I-I've done?" Echo cast a quick glance to Markata, who stood on the sidelines, arms crossed over his chest, expression impassive.
"No. You're just not thinking straight. And I want to come into this with a clean conscience."
You want to come into this? Echo frowned, but she did as she was told. Echo started thinking, wracking her brain and attempting to figure out this puzzle that was laid before her. And the more Echo got to thinking about it, the more she found that things didn't add up. For some odd reason, and Echo honestly could not figure out why, her mind kept sticking to the night that she'd been outed as a spy. She was stuck on the way Pumyra had looked at her, and she'd seen relief in her eyes.
Not hatred, not anger. . . Relief.
Scenes and images kept flashing in her eyes. Her journal. A raccoon. He'd said. . . What had he said? "I don't have this item anymore." He said she'd dropped it, but she'd lost it at Dog City. Pumyra had dragged Lion-O there. . .
"Pumyra. . . Pumyra's the spy." Echo said. Somehow, she sounded shocked, though she was quite sure that that emotion had been stripped from her.
"You're clever. Now ask why."
Echo turned to Markata. "Why? That means she was your spy. That she is the spy. Y-You caused this. I would have been with them, I would have f-fought along-"
In a flash, her shadow was in front of her, a hand coming down to cover her mouth.
"No. Not quite. I showed you that revelation. Don't forget it now. History repeats itself - remember that. We're breaking the cycle this time. . . Honestly, for being smart enough to piece that together, you're still kind of stupid."
"There's no reason for that language, ladies." Markata interrupted. "Yes. You're correct - Pumyra is very much my spy. And I apologize profusely for outing you in such a manner, lieutenant. . . But she needed to keep her cover, and decided that exposing you was the best option. I won't lie to you, child. We share a mental connection, and sometimes, I have heard snippets of your thoughts, but I never used you as a vessel of surveillance."
"Makes sense." The shadow said, dropping Echo. She strode away again, clenching and unclenching her hands. "I'm impatient. Let's get this over with."
"Does this mean. . . I'm going to die?" Echo asked, her voice just a small whisper.
The shadow wafted her hand through the smoke, and it curled over her fingers, as if greeting an old friend. "Not quite. But in a sense, yes. . ."
At this point, Echo welcome the notion of it. Everything she'd heard, everything she'd discovered - it was just too much for her to process. Pumyra was the spy - the real spy - and she was still inside of Lion-O's group. . . but he wouldn't believe her even if she somehow managed to write it in the sky anonymously. And. . .
And the worst part was. . .
She didn't even know if she wanted to tell him.
He'd chased her out. Stabbed her with Omens. Had accused her of being a spy when the true spy had been right under his nose. Why shouldn't be pay penance for the things that he'd done?
But. . . But he was her friend.
Echo curled in on herself, pain ripping through her.
Nothing made sense. Every truth she'd ever known had been completely uprooted and turned inside out. She just. . . She just wanted to go to sleep. To forget it had ever happened.
"You will." The shadow said softly, "All of this pain, all of your suffering. . . it'll be over soon. I promise. There's just one last thing for you to understand."
She turned around, and Echo looked up at her, trying to peer into the shadow of her hood. She shook her head, absently scrubbing at her cheek.
"I just. . . I just want it all to stop. Please. . . No more."
"One more thing. That's it. I promise. It doesn't involve anybody else. . . But you."
Echo was shaking all over, but she was so terrified she just couldn't form any words. She'd already been forced to endure too many revelations, too many truths. . . What was the one the shadow wanted to show her now?
"I can take all your pain away. Everything. I can grant your wish if you'll let me. But in return, I want you to understand something. One final truth."
The shadow began to approach again, footsteps slow and even as she drew closer. Slowly, she lifted her hands, and with careful movements, wrapped them around the edge of her hood and pulled it down.
"What creature has the ability to tether a soul so tightly to their own?"
What. . . What the hell am I?
She was staring at a mirror image of herself. Granted, there were differences, huge, gigantic differences, but the face, the body. . . even the scars. Everything. She was looking at a carbon copy of herself. But what the hell did that make her? If this ghost, this soul, was her own, then how the hell was she walking around? And, Echo had to stop at that. That soul was her own. Hers. Hers. The world spun around her in a dizzying swirl of colors, and her breaths came in little raspy pants. She shook her head, white hair falling into her face.
"No. No, I can't deal with this anymore. Make it stop. Please. Please."
"I know. It hurts. Everything hurts. And that's because, while you have my body, you are not me. You have some of my qualities, but I fought in Terra's war for years. I conquered my insanity. You? You are a pale imitation of what I can do."
The shadow. . . No, her carbon copy. . . approached her, getting onto her knees before Echo. She reached out and cupped her face, and Echo saw her own smile, bitter and dry, looking back at her. "Your name is so fitting. You're an echo of me. . . Just a tiny fraction of myself. But I will grant your wish. You are so unsuited to this war. Me? I've been training for years. I've been waiting for this moment."
Echo gasped as she felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her chest. She looked down, and the coldness that she was feeling spread, becoming more and more frozen, until it consumed almost everything. But there, in her chest, she saw her copy's hand sticking into her, fingers wrapping around her heart. . . crushing it. Echo's vision wavered as darkness crawled in over it, choking it entirely. Echo pitched forward, collapsing onto her phantom.
Did I. . . Did I do the right thing?
In the end. . . Did I make the right choice?
"You let me worry about that now. I'll take over everything. The pain. The agony. The decisions. The war - I'll take everything. Just rest."
Echo breathed out, her heart stuttering in her chest. . . Before it stopped entirely.
She fell forward again, hitting the stone floor. A tempest raged inside her as the void in her chest sucked everything - memories, emotions. . . Nothing remained.
She laid there, still and silent, ice creeping into her skin and her veins. In that moment, Echo died. She was no longer alive, her heart and her mind finally gone.
Moments passed, in which her body lied there, still and quiet. The chanting in the room stopped, and the smoke began to dissipate. Markata shifted imperceptibly, looking at the still body on the floor. It didn't move, not so much as a twitch. And for the first time in a very long time, he wondered if his spell had worked, if his magic had been strong enough. . .
But with an electric jolt, that body was very much alive again.
Pale, colorless hands pressed themselves against the floor, slowly leveraging herself back into a sitting position. Departing from his place outside of the circle, Markata walked over to her, stopping before the white-haired human. In response, she tilted her head back, blue eyes shining as she stared up at him.
"Welcome back. . . Echo." He reached down, offering her a hand to help herself up to her feet.
She smacked it away, blue eyes hardening into a glare.
"That isn't my name." She said, voice hoarse. Slowly, she made her way up to her feet, one of her hands winding around her stomach.
Markata smiled.
"Welcome back, lieutenant Erica Riley."
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1.) We bring an end to an era. This is the end to FOTE's story, and the beginning of its sequel. Fall of the Empire's sequel, Rise Out Of The Ashes (ROOTA) will be uploaded here. That way you can flip back and forth between FOTE and ROOTA. ROOTA will cover my second season of the show.
2.) It will not be in Echo's POV.
Do do do doo! It will be in Lion-O's!
I know, I know, a lot of you are going, "WHAT THE HELL? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? WTF YOU HORRIBLE AUTHOR?!"
And that's because I told y'all at the beginning that you already knew the first season from Lion-O's (and the other Cat's) POV. Now that Sn. 1 is ended, it's time to meander on back over to the ThunderCats.
3.) I hope this answers the question I got a lot last chapter. "Wait a minute. . . isn't Pumyra the spy?"
Well. . . Now you know!
4.) I don't quite have a complete plan for Sn. 2, but I know where I'm going. So rest assured, I know the end result, but I just need a little bit of time to get it all together. I promise the wait won't be too long, though.
5.) I hope the epilogue lived up to FOTE's name. I had fun writing it. But what will happen to poor little Echo?
. . . I mean. . . Erica Riley.
Just who is Erica Riley, anyway?
Mysteries upon mysteries. I love them. I promise that what Echo discovered. . . Well, I'll just say we've just hit the tip of the iceberg. I love mysteries, and the explanations that follow those mysteries will be forthcoming. . . just not right away. If I gave you all the answers now, wouldn't you get bored? But I promise, they're all coming.
6.) Thank you for all the wonderful reviews! I wasn't expecting so many last chapter. I think I got 10 or some crazy number like that. Anyway, I'll go and start planning Sn. 2. . . It'll be good, I promise.
7.) Thank you very much to Shara for a lovely piece of art! I now have 3 art pieces waiting for release when we hit the next few story arcs. I'm not a good artist, but I do try. But thank you, you two lovely ladies, for giving me such lovely fanarts! I admire them greatly - they're very pretty!
For now, toodle-loo!