Rise Out Of The Ashes

by WAR-Operative

Should you choose to take the Sword of Omens, you inherit the shattered. You inherit the knowledge that though we have been broken, we may yet one day be reforged. I, Lion-O, have broken us. And I seek to find the one that will recast our legacy into something beautiful. Will that be you? Are you worthy? Complete, 2019 - It's finally over, friends!

38. Legacy: Redux, Pt II

Fall Of The Empire

Rating: T-17+

Disclaimer: I don't own this. . . or do I? Nah, I don't. So don't sue me. I'm already in enough debt with my student loans.

Author's Notes: Alright, Pt. 2.

Guess what, I was writing it, and there's going to be a Pt. 3! I'm taking a page from Anne's playbook here, but primarily because these chapters are just so long.

There's just too much information to cover, I'm sorry. But don't worry, I swear I'm going to make it worth it. Because as soon as this chapter is published, I'll be polishing up Pt. 3.

Welcome well over 15k words. OTL

There's a lot of exposition and things to explain during these next two chapters. Whew. Trying to handle it all as well as I can. Thank you to all of the kind reviews! I understand a lot of you are angry at Lion-O, and I can understand that. Just keep in mind that grief does some funny things to people, and we've all seen what it did to him when his father died.

He had a few weeks to come to terms with it. With Pumyra's death. . . he didn't. Poor thing.

I rewrote this thing like, seven times. I need to publish it before I scrap it and do it again. Ugh. So here you go!

Warnings: Nothing, except for stylistic things FF loves to om nom. More blood and gore than normal. If you see anything with the first-person in it, it should be italicized. That is all.

. . . this text is here for a mysterious reason.

---

Erica was wrapped in a world that she didn't understand. Every emotion, thought, and feeling kept colliding with one another, creating a scrambled clusterfuck that dragged her down as soon as she tried to wade her way through it. There were no barriers or separations between the voices. Everything was just crashing together in a cacophony of noise. Sometimes a stronger voice would corral the others, but it never lasted long.

Her mind was collateral damage in the chaos, and she just couldn't seem to keep a stable hold on reality for longer than a second or three.

Every one of her lucid moments was an island, a beacon of light in the tempest that had no end. The storm raged around her, pulling her under its waves for long periods of times, and it was a miracle that she was just barely managing to tread water from island to island.

It one could call it that.

When she was sucked under the waves, she blacked out.

Only the strong presence of fear and an awful memory of golden eyes and fire brought her back to the surface.

Vaguely, somewhere, whether it was here or there, she heard a sound. A rustle.

Erica twisted, glad to be drawn out of her mind and to the present. She saw the ghostly shadows of men. Women. Children. Figures that were both everywhere and nowhere at once. Corporeal and yet transparent.

She shook her head, trying to stem the screams, sighs, whispers, and cries.

The present moment. She needed to focus on that.

Slowly, she began to make her way to the next lucid island.

". . . I was correct." A voice murmured.

She heard the footsteps draw closer.

Who was it?

Erica tried to roll over father to see who was there, but when she pressed against her arm, she was stopped by a hot pain that stabbed through it. It sapped the last of her strength. She was too weak to do anything. Instead, she resigned herself to lay there and curl up into a ball of her own misery. That sounded like a better plan of action.

She focused instead on making it closer to an island, but there was no telling how long this lucid moment would last. Each one eroded away under the might of the sea, sometimes when she was on them, sometimes before she could even reach them.

A hand touched her, startling her, and she shivered when a taloned finger dragged up along her thigh, over the swell of her hip, and then to her back.

Metal clinked against metal as that hand traced up her spine.

She felt dread take root in her stomach, and shortly after, knots formed.

Something was wrong.

Well and truly wrong.

"Like you, I am the last of my race." The voice continued.

The finger still traced up, up, up. Any moment, and Erica knew that it was going to dig into a gap of her spinal plating, and she was going to become paraplegic. . . right? She didn't know this person, their intentions. . .

The finger outlined the top of the nerve port at the base of her neck. Erica tried to speak, tried to tell them to stop, but the words came out stuttered and useless on her tongue.

The island was drawing nearer. She just had to work her way a little more to it. . .

"I could kill you." The voice carried on, dropping to a sinister whisper. "I could end it all. The last human. . . your race would finally perish and you would plague the universe no longer. You would atone for the crimes you have committed against everyone. Me. My race. My family."

Her hands touched the sand. Erica began to crawl up the island, hauling herself out of the ocean.

The finger dug into her nerve port, ripping out the piece of machinery clipped into her spine, but the failsafe didn't activate. The talon plunged into the port, but she hardly felt the pain. A strange, electrical zap moved up and down her spine, making all of her nerves crackle. Her eyes snapped open, and she gasped, her muscles spasming.

She felt something.

Something inside her, invading. Intruding.

Something not human.

She saw a giant shadow on the wall, with wings and wires. . . and. . .

We all meet the Reaper someday.

Erica's eyes shot open as memories flooded through her, and lucidity poured through her brain, snapping everything into a crystal clear focus.

Adrenaline poured through her veins.

With a savage war cry, her power exploded.

---

"I'm solid." Lion-O said, staring down Cheetara. "It won't happen again."

The cleric assessed him for a moment, her eyes searching him critically, before she nodded. "Good." She replied. "We do this the right way. We have sentenced her to death, Lion-O, but what's happened so far is not the way of our people."

"Not to mention," Panthro chimed in, "The fact that apparently she's got the Stone. . . somehow."

"If we stopped to talk to her," Kit said, crossing her arms.

"Maybe we'd find out what happened." Kat finished.

Both twins glared hotly up at him, and Lion-O breathed out a ragged sigh. Fine. He deserved that.

He held up his hands in surrender.

"We can try," He said. "We'll follow the customs of our people. We can talk to her. But I don't think. . ."

Lion-O paused, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling.

He looked at the house Erica was laid up in. Surely-

An explosive tempest answered him a heartbeat later.

The air around him turned to the consistency of syrup, and various pieces of rubble rose from the ground, rocks and sticks and stones lifting into the air - but that was all he saw before a wave of pure energy smacked into him.

Lion-O rode it out, claws and feet scraping along the ground as he stopped himself from flying away.

The twins, closest to the now-destroyed house, weren't so lucky. With frightened cries, the kittens were flung into the air - until they were caught by Panthro, the general's arms reeling out to catch them.

How is she using her telekinesis?! It's not possible - not with that piece of tech attached!

His senses alerted him to an incoming strike, and he dodged to the side, his eyes widening when he realized what had hit him. A thin, black rod was zipping through the air messily, clanging off of rocks and bouncing around as it responded to Erica's call.

Whipping around, he had Omens in his hands a second later, and he cursed as the blade refused to extend. The Stones sat, still and quiet, in his gauntlet, equally as determined not to help. Of all the times for them to choose to revolt. . . !

Erica bit out a scream of pain, and then her power died down a second later, disappearing just as quickly as it'd come. Lion-O stopped and stared, taking in a very strange scene before him.

The house they'd been keeping Erica in had been utterly obliterated, laid to waste as the epicenter of the blast. Erica held one of her blades in her hands, the sword flipped to act as a knife, the top of it shaking and making a small clatter as she tried to plunge it down into. . .

Soul Sever?!

The tip of her blade was laid directly against Sever's chest, the sword clattering as she tried to push it into his armor. The necromancer held Erica's wrists in his own so tightly that her skin was bleeding out to a sharp white. It was sure to turn into a nasty bruise.

His "wings" had been extended, wires and sharp-looking jacks snaking under Erica's shirt, circling around her waist and hooking into her back.

Her face was pinched tight with pain, her lips pressed into a thin line.

Another wire hooked in, making a loud snkt noise as it did, and she cried out.

"You prove my race right again. You humans are capable of nothing save for death and violence."

"S-Shut up." Erica snarled through gritted teeth.

Lion-O knew she was weak. Every part of her body was shaking, her face creased in strain, beads of sweat dripping down her face. On her head, however, that piece of tech Kit had hooked into her was absent.

Had Soul Sever removed it?

"The war is long over. Everyone has died-"

"Shut up!"

"-and the hands of you-"

"Shut up!"

"-and your ilk. You caused this-"

"SHUT UP!"

Erica tried to drive the sword down, but Sever twisted her wrist, disarming her, and swiftly grabbed her neck and threw her against the ground. Erica made a pitiful choking sound before Sever, deciding he wanted to hear it again, picked her up and slammed her against the closest rock he could find.

Sever's optics were so bright they were a pale-green color.

"This is your fault. All of it."

"Sever!" Lion-O snapped. "What in Thundera are you doing? Let her go!"

"Put her down!" Cheetara yelled, staff held at the ready.

The necromancer did not respond. Not at first. His glowing optics were practically burrowing into Erica, and the human glared right back, lucid for the first time in many hours. Sever's grip increased on her throat, and Erica choked, her lips beginning to turn blue and purple, her face a disgusting red. She flailed, struggling, hands scraping at Sever's wrists as she tried to pry him off.

"Sever!" Tygra snapped, cocking a gun.

Erica brought up her foot in an attempt to kick him, and when she wheezed, her hands dropped to her sides, her leg raising one last time to try and kick him. But her fingers landed on her boot, her fingertips pulling out the hilt of a knife.

Sever noticed.

His wings twitched.

Lion-O cringed when he heard something like muscles tearing.

Wet.

Loud.

There was no word to describe the pain Lion-O saw on Erica's face. Sever loosened his grip, but instead of sucking in deep drags of air, she hung there like a rag doll. Her arms dropped to her sides, her newly-acquired knife clattering to the stones below. Her eyes were glassing over, tears sliding onto her cheeks.

"Sever!" Lion-O yelled, trying to get the necromancer's attention. If this continued, Lion-O was sure Erica was going to die.

They hadn't gotten the answers they needed yet.

"Lion-O." Erica murmured, her voice small, weak, and choked, "P-Please. Please. If you ever had any. . . any. . . a-affection for me. . . please, for the love of god, kill it."

It was the first time she'd actually used his name. She normally called him Liar. And she didn't sound insane or enraged - she sounded urgent. Pleading. Like she was a feral Cat backed into a corner with no way out.

"Enough!" Cheetara said, spinning her staff and slamming the butt of it into the ground. Vines sprouted in the dirt, meant to reach the pair and immobilize them - but a shield appeared, repelling Cheetara's magic.

It shimmered in the light, looking semi-digital, transparent hexagons folding over one another to provide protection where it was needed. Where the roots touched the shield, a fierce light and electrical spark flashed, before the root became still. Frozen.

The vines stopped in a perfect semi-circle around Sever and Erica. No longer needed, the shield faded.

"No." Sever said, optics never leaving Erica. "None of you understand. I will have my turn."

Erica grated out a harsh laugh. "Get it over with then. Just d-do it. Or do y-you like seeing-"

He lifted her off of the rock, more of the wires descending from his skeletal wings.

Erica went still as they snaked under her shirt, and Lion-O watched as they hooked into. . . something metal? On Erica's back? When had she gotten technology implanted into her body? She grimaced as each one slid into a port or forcibly made one, hooking into her with various sounds.

"Unlike your race, I never saw it fitting to make my enemies suffer. . . but the years have degraded us both, it seems. Tell me, human child. Tell me what I am owed. Stand in my judgement."

Lights set into his armor began to blaze, lighting up, as did his optics. If Lion-O thought they were pale before, he was wrong. They were almost white now.

Erica shook her head, looking terrified.

"No. No no no-"

"Silence." Sever hissed.

Erica arched, like she was being electrocuted.

Sever seemed to hum, the lights along his body brightening to a pale green, and then a white. . .

Lion-O jumped in surprise when the Spirit Stone flared to life, exploding in a flurry of pink energy that coalesced into. . . an animal? The pink animal-being struck Sever, knocking the necromancer back. Erica hovered in the air, suspended by his wires.

Sever's lights fizzled out, and the Stone's power died away a moment later, the animal-being dissipating as well.

Sever bit out a bitter chuckle. "I should have known. That you, so weak and incompetent, are unable to stand before me. Not without help."

Erica hung there like a puppet, suspended by his wires.

"Lion-O." Erica wheezed, twisting her neck to look at him. One of her eyes was bloodshot.

If Lion-O thought her eyes were disturbing before, he was wrong. It was almost entirely red.

"Please," She begged, "If we don't, Terra-"

"Is no more." Soul Sever replied. "There is no. More. War. There are no more humans. . . there are no more Terrans. All that remains are ghosts."

Erica started to cry, tears dripping onto the stones below her, her lips trembling.

A new stillness settled over them, as Soul Sever stood there, looking at her.

"Killing you serves me no purpose. Killing me serves no purpose. The war is over. . ."

They dimmed, going so dark it looked as though he were offline.

". . . it has been. For millennia."

And then Lion-O felt like he'd stepped into an alternate reality. Erica's tremors renewed, and she shook her head, before a sob escaped her. She hung there, like a dead puppet dangling from an equally dead puppeteer, and she cried.

The necromancer stood in front of her, not saying anything.

Silence reigned supreme.

---

Lion-O wasn't sure when the silence was going to end.

Or who was going to end it.

But he was sure he hadn't heard Sever right. But he was fairly certain that the necromancer had said 'millennia.'

Lion-O swallowed, glancing around at the party gathered, and he decided to do what he did best:

Diffuse the situation by talking.

"Sever, you said millennia. But. . . but that can't be right. That means that you're both over a thousand years old."

Sever had to be mistaken. The only animal on Third Earth (barring the Guardians of the Stone) he knew to be old was Jaga. But certainly not more than a few hundred years. . . maybe. Nobody knew how old Jaga was.

"Incorrect." Sever replied, green optics focusing on him, "Millennia can mean either one or multiple. There are gaps in my memory, I must admit. Large swaths where I entered a stasis to make my passing of time easier. My chronometer has not accounted for this time. But the moments I spent awake. . . amount to well over 2,546 years. So, longer, Lion-O. Much, much longer. Hundreds of years passed while I was asleep in the void. And I slept often."

Lion-O knew he wasn't the only one shocked. That he wasn't the only one gaping.

"That's not right!" Kit said, standing at Panthro's hip.

"Yeah, Sunny told Echo she was seventeen!"

"It isn't possible." Panthro assured them. "Not even the greatest, most legendary beast on Third Earth could live so long."

Lion-O wanted to tell Panthro that he was mistaken, that very clearly Leviathan and Spider had live for thousands of years. . . but he wasn't so sure.

Spidera had given birth to children. What wasn't to say that one simply grew to take her place when she was too weak? What if there had been more than one Spidera? And what if similar situations existed for the Ramlak and Leviathan?

He wracked his brain, thinking, wondering what the answer might be. Sever's eyes dilated and narrowed, optics momentarily shuttering, as if waiting for Lion-O to draw his conclusion.

Then it hit him.

"Technology." He murmured, feeling blown away. "What. . . what kind of technology do you have? What can you have that can artificially enhance lifespans into immortality?!"

"Correct." Sever replied. "Both my race and hers utilized technology in such a fashion where this feat was possible. A Terran lifespan amounted to approximately 437 years. A human lifespan, if our research and observations were correct, was 134."

Which meant that they both should have died long, long ago.

Lion-O shook his head, feeling as though it were spinning. Sever still had Erica and his clutches, and as the silence dragged on, he glanced between the two of them, wanting to understand. But he'd found a calm vein, and he wanted to press it.

"If. . . if what you say is true, then how are you two still here?" Lion-O asked.

"I do not know, Lion-O. The humans arrived on Terra and descended as a plague with their starships. They initiated the war that claimed my race. And their own. How is very much what I would like to understand as well."

To understand how?

That seemed like a good game plan. How. How and why.

Lion-O nodded his head. "We can help, Sever. It's Thunderian customs that we judge our criminals in much the same manner. To weigh their actions against their circumstances. I. . . we want to know how. And why."

Sever examined him critically for a moment, saying nothing. And then he turned back to Erica, who - wisely - had said and done nothing.

"You wish to understand the scope of her sins?" He finally asked.

Lion-O nodded. "We do."

"Very well. She will require some form of medical attention if we are to answer these questions."

Lion-O breathed out a sigh of relief, glad that he'd (somehow) talked Sever down from whatever it was he was going to do. But it wasn't as though the Spirit Stone and the animal-being had given him a choice. Lion-O conversed with Sever a little more, trying to encourage the necromancer to put the human down, but Sever refused.

He claimed that he was the only reason she wasn't attacking them all in a homicidal rage. When Lion-O asked him if it had anything to do with the wires hooked into her back, Sever refused to answer.

But he had permitted Cheetara to get close enough to heal Erica, if only briefly. The human looked much better, the wound on her arm less intense, and her face no longer bruised and swollen. . . but her eyes were still bloodshot.

Cheetara had intended to heal Erica as much as she could, but Erica had bodily shoved the cleric away from her, and then had cursed and thrashed as she'd struggled in the wires.

Sever obliged, lowering her to the ground, where Erica sat, brought her knees into her chest, and tucked her head into them, curling up as much as she physically could. She turned her back to them, refusing to acknowledge or look at anyone, and practically held a bright, flashing DO NOT TALK TO ME. DO NOT TOUCH ME sign. Sever's wires were still hooked into her spine, but there were less of them now, and her jacket and shirt had fallen down, concealing them.

Lion-O was glad things had calmed down, however. He glanced around, taking in the other Cats, and discovered that both Kit and Kat had fled Panthro's side. The kittens chose instead to fearlessly march by Sever, approaching Erica. They ignored Lion-O's hissed warning entirely.

Panthro shook his head, eyeing the necromancer. "Don't worry, Lion-O. He won't do nothin'. We'll make sure of that."

"My magic. . . you repelled it." Cheetara said, eyeing the vines. "How?"

"Fight fire with fire, as the humans used to say. You control the spirits and life force of this planet. You manipulate it into your so-called 'magic.' The Necromechers. . . . installed that ability inside me. Imagine that. The souls of my race. . . in my armor."

Lion-O shivered. "Sever, you didn't. . ." His mind flashed briefly to what had transpired in his lab, of what had happened to Tygra.

Sever looked startled. "No!" He spat, "I would never. For the lives of my family, I traded my body. I had no control over what they did to me. . . but you see, Lion-O, when Terrans die, we place our bodies back to the planet which gave us life. We believed there was a force - the planet's soul, if you will - that gave it to us. It was only fair we do the same. Terra was threaded through with our spirits."

Lion-O felt his head pounding already. Aliens. Planets. Souls. He wished that there was a video or something he could watch to make understanding a little easier.

"You said that they installed this ability in you," Tygra said, eyeing Sever impassively, "What did you mean by that?"

"Terrans could connect with these spirits and ask to borrow their energy. This was our magic. We were capable of twisting the terrain and elements to our whims. . . within reason. But such powers did not belong to the humans. Not until they stole them, of course."

The kittens sat down by the human homicidal maniac, and pressed themselves against Erica. If she noticed, she didn't say anything. She just sat there, curled up, but at least she wasn't trying to kill them or blow things up with her mind.

A memory began to wriggle in Lion-O's mind. In the past, he remembered Echo standing on the steps before the elephant village, looking torn.

"Annet said these powers aren't mine."

Had she known then? Had she just tried to absolve herself?

"Are you speaking of. . . the telepathy?" Cheetara asked.

Sever flicked his wrist, and a wire curled over to Erica's back, forcibly lifting up her shirt. Kit and Kat protested, but Erica hadn't seemed to notice. Lion-O could see her back clearly now.

It was like she'd replaced her human spine with a piece of technology. It dripped a clear, viscous fluid, staining her clothes. Whatever Sever had done to it, it looked. . . opened. Like it was supposed to lay flush against her skin. Half of it had popped up, permitting him access to an indented part of her spine, filled with lights and ports. But it was clear that what Sever was doing was not without pain - Erica's body was tense, keeping still as possible.

Had her skin been stripped (surgically?) from her spine. Metal bits jutted out, embedded into her skin. It led from the base of her tailbone all the way to the bottom of her skull, the lights set into it glowing brightly. The pair of boxes that were normally hooked up to her back were absent. Idly, Lion-O wondered when they'd fallen off.

"They refined the souls, the essences of my people into conduits, and then threaded them through here. Human physiology is a delicate thing, and this procedure did not come without consequences. I heard thousands died. But this was the result. A human with stolen powers, fueled with the souls of Terrans."

"Stop it." Erica murmured, grabbing at her shirt and trying to tug it down. "Stop fucking stripping me all the damn time."

Sever eventually let her, though Lion-O could see her spine tenting the back of her shirt.

Sensing this was going to be a long conversation, Lion-O leaned against a rock and crossed his arms over his chest.

"So. Let me try to understand this," He proposed. "Humans descended from space to your planet and started a war. When Terrans died, they returned to their planet, and living Terrans could interact with the spirits of the dead ones and manipulate the earth and the elements?"

Sever nodded. "Correct."

"But why did the humans come for you?" Tygra asked. "When you told us about these 'stolen powers', it seemed as though humans had no idea it even existed."

Sever quirked his head over to Erica's direction. "Human?" He said, his tone dripping venom and honey.

"Terra." She answered, eyes staring down at the rock. "We needed Terra."

"For what purpose?" Panthro asked her, mimicking Lion-O's idea. "Fighting an enemy on their home turf just seems like a fool's errand."

"Earth was dead." She replied evenly. "I only saw holovids of it. But the planet had died a long time ago. We took to space to find another home. And we found Terra."

Sever let out a thoughtful hum. "Found seems a bit generous. Invaded is a more apt term."

Erica shook her head, gritting her teeth. "I didn't start the damn war. . . I was born into it."

Sever waved airily at her, as though he didn't care. "You still had a part in it. How many thousands of Terrans did you slaughter?"

"How many humans did Terrans kill?"

"We defended our home from you-"

Things were quickly becoming heated again. Lion-O didn't want to see the kittens caught in the crossfire. Both of them were eyeing Sever warily, pressing into Erica like body shields. Lion-O decided to diffuse the situation again.

"Sever, how did you get here? You'll have to forgive me, but this seems too coincidental for it to mere chance."

"It was not." Sever agreed, prying his optics off of Erica. "I engineered this encounter. I began to regain my memories when she came to me, and asked me to remove this."

He reached into the folds of his skirt and pulled out a piece of technology. Lion-O recognized it as the half-halo that had been clipped into her spine, the very same piece of tech that Kit and Kat had risked their lives to install.

"It's been far too long since I had seen something of human origin. . . I was so possessed by my grief and obsession that I'd locked the memories away. . . When I had remembered, I knew what I had to do. I attempted to contact your emissary at the animal council, but he was. . . forgetful. I ensured to install a tracking beacon into the headpiece."

"The message!" Lion-O remembered, blinking. "That was you?"

"Yes."

"When did she come to you?" Panthro asked. "Do you remember, exactly? Before or after we first met you?"

"I do not know the date, but it was after we encountered one another. She was not with you, then. And her hair was much longer. She wore a frightful amount of red."

Lion-O digested that piece of information, trying to fit that into a timeline of events. They'd kicked Erica out of their group when Pumyra had outed her as the spy. When Lion-O had seen her last with long hair, she'd broken the glass dome of Avista and he'd stabbed her with Omens. The only other time was when they'd fought at the Ramlak and she'd cut it. She hadn't worn red then. But it had to be somewhere between those periods of time.

"When she came to me, I was astounded to discover she had a soul tethered to her body. It floated about, protecting her."

"What?" Cheetara asked. "A soul? How is that possible?"

"Such a feat does not sound plausible, but I began to conjure theories and hypothesizes. If she were walking around, she had to be the host. But why could her soul not return to her body? There had to be something preventing this. When I disengaged this technology, I scanned her.

"And as I began to calculate, I discovered there were multiple bio-signatures reading back to me. The event triggered a search where I ran across a series of files I'd locked away, long, long ago. When I accessed them, I began to remember the deadly capabilities of my race's greatest foe, although the memory files are corrupted, so this took me longer than I'd like to admit."

Lion-O breathed out a breath. He looked at Erica's back.

". . . do you remember this?"

"Some." Erica replied a few beats later, "Not all. Not until I woke up in the Pyramid. Everything before then. . . feels like a fever dream."

When Lion-O had asked Mumm-Ra if Erica was the Stone, he'd said no. Sever had said that Erica had read as multiple bio-signatures. . . which meant she was multiple people. The earlier insanity she'd displayed was slowly beginning to make sense. Lion-O swore he heard a lock tumbling open.

"I get it now." Lion-O said, looking down at the Stones in his gauntlet. "When we fought her before, different souls were taking control. That's why the sword would fight one but refuse to fight the other."

"It seems plausible." Tygra agreed, looking at Lion-O. "But. . . why now?"

"It's possible what Mumm-Ra did was weaken the construct of the Stone." Cheetara added, "When he tried to draw it out of her. . . Lion-O, we have to reform it."

He nodded. As he shifted, however, a sharp edge dug into his chest, reminding him of another mystery. Reaching inside of his breastplate, Lion-O withdrew the computer chips dangling by a metal string. He'd tucked them there for safekeeping, until he could get answers.

"She found these with the Stone. I believed they were the Stone."

"They are not." Sever said, reaching his hand forward. "If I may?"

Lion-O hesitated, but only for a moment, before he trusted Sever and stepped up, placing the computer chips inside his hand.

Sever turned them over, fiddling with them, his optics shuttering, brightening, and dimming.

"Ah, yes, her language. Crude. Unemotional. It has been many years since I last read it."

"I believe they're computer chips. Or some form of technology." Lion-O said. "They have to be important."

In response, Sever turned to Erica and chucked the chips at her. They smacked against her arm with a muted thwip before they fell into the dirt.

Kit bristled. "Hey!"

"Sever!" Lion-O gaped. "What-?"

"Not important." Sever replied. "Not in the slightest. While you are correct in guessing they are technology, they hold absolutely no value to anybody but her. Humans had a special name for them. . . though I cared nothing to learn of it."

"Dog tags."

Erica's voice was small, and muffled, as she spoke. "They're my dog tags."

Slowly, she uncurled from her ball, and reached down to grab the metallic chips.

"A dog. . . tag?" Panthro echoed. "What in the blazes is a dog tag?"

"Ah, yes." Sever said, gazing at Erica, "I recall these more clearly now. We found thousands glittering on the battlefield with the corpses."

Lion-O swallowed. "Thousands of dead humans?"

Hr recalled Erica (though she'd called herself Echo back then), telling him that she had been in a war. And Sever had just confirmed that humans and Terrans had fought each other thousands of years ago. While that wasn't necessarily the surprising part, what shocked him was the fact that there had once been thousands of humans.

Dead ones.

Erica shifted, staring at the dog tags. Kit and Kat looked at them curiously, and wordlessly, she passed them over to the kittens for inspection. ". . . if we had time, we'd go over and snap one off. They both say the same thing. Name. Rank. Serial number. You got multiple copies. You wore them on your neck and tucked them into your boots. . . nobody knew what part of you was going to be intact when your number was called."

That was. . . chilling.

Kit and Kat turned it over in their hands.

"Echo. . ." Kat asked, holding them, "What does this say?"

For a moment, Erica was silent. But then she answered.

"My name isn't Echo. It's Erica. My dog tags read Riley, Erica. 879 71 5430 Alpha Tango Zulu. Blood type: A Positive."

"What's a blood type?" Kat asked her.

". . . it's the kind of blood I have. So if I need blood, they don't give me the wrong one."

"Humans can have different blood?!"

"Woah!"

"How was that in the Stone?" Cheetara asked.

Erica rolled her shoulder in a shrug. "I don't know. Unsettled the shit outta me."

She seemed to be telling the truth.

"But why is it called a dog tag?" Panthro continued. "Dogs don't wear tags, 'specially nothin' like that."

Erica was silent for another moment, and Lion-O believed that she was going to (stubbornly) not answer. A beat later, however, and she reached over and took the tags back from the kittens.

"Sunny told me that they look like immunization records for animals before. . . we. . . " She trailed off.

"Before you what?" Tygra pressed.

Erica looked away, refusing to say anything more.

"While this conversation is pleasant, I wish to get to what I am owed." Sever said, "I believe I was a little too hasty the first time I tried to extract it myself. Lion-O, I believe your. . . Spirit stone can be of assistance to us in this matter."

Erica's lips pressed into a thin line, and Kat rubbed a hand over the human's back soothingly, careful not to stray too close to her spine.

"No." She bit out.

"You will stand in our judgement, you human psychopath-"

At that, Erica shot up to her feet, glaring at Sever.

"I've had it up to here with your self-righteous bullshit. I'm not a fucking psycopath. I sacrificed everything I was - my own fucking body - for my people. For that stupid, godforsaken war!"

"And look where it got you." Sever replied quietly, optics darkening.

Erica gritted her teeth, her eyes narrowing, "Stand there on your fucking high horse. I did what I had to to p-protect. . . t-them. . ."

Erica stood there, swaying, her anger fading, her eyes suddenly getting glassy. The air shivered, changing consistency. Lion-O could feel it pulse from normal to thin, and then thick, and then slide up and down a spectrum of the two.

"Sever! That piece of technology - you need to get it back onto her, quickly!" Lion-O shouted.

"What's happening?" Kat asked.

"Echo, no!" Kit called, running up and throwing her arms around her waist.

"Kit, Kat, get away from her!"

Erica shuddered, face scrunching in pain.

"It appears not even my subroutines can keep the chaos at bay for long. . . Lion-O." Sever said, not yet moving. He just stood there and stared, "If you wish to get the Stone, we will require the other's help."

A rock picked up off the ground. Kat grabbed Erica's hand and was tugging on it, but she looked as though she were lost, staring at something faraway.

"I do not want the Stone. I do not want any Stone," Sever continued, "But with your help, I will get what I am owed. I will build a construct and we can piece together this broken barrier your Mumm-Ra destroyed. Then the Stone will be yours."

Lion-O looked at Erica.

And then to Sever.

And the Cats gathered around him, waiting on his word.

And finally, he looked inside himself.

No matter what option he picked, he was fairly certain Erica was going to be hurt somehow.

But if Mumm-Ra got his hands on that stone. . .

Lion-O nodded his head.

Sever was on Erica in a heartbeat, his hand wrapping around her face. He bodily picked the human up and shoved her back against the rock. Before the kittens could strike Sever, several thick wires wrapped around them, holding them in place.

The air stilled as Erica let out a choked sound. More wires snaked down, clamping over Erica, and it seemed to be enough to snap her back to the present.

"What does Omens think of you now?"

That was what his greatest enemy had asked him.

He watched as Erica squirmed, trying to free herself, trying to ward off the wires and the cables. He listened to her beg for mercy, to be spared. In his gauntlet, the Spirit Stone hummed, coming to life. He looked at Tygra, Cheetara, and Panthro, and nodded his head. He wasn't doing this to be cruel. He wasn't doing this to be unjust.

Panthro seemed uncertain, but trust glinted in his eyes.

Tygra nodded his head. He was behind his brother, no matter what.

Cheetara's eyes were hart and flinty, but as Lion-O held her gaze, she relented, dropping her eyes.

Lion-O began to step forward, his hand outstretched.

"P-Please," Erica whimpered, "Don't. I can't!"

Kit and Kat, wrapped up and kept safely out of the way, protested, biting and hacking, clawing and attempting everything in the world to escape Sever's hold.

"You can." Lion-O told her. "You can and you will."

"Hurry." Sever said, urging him on. "We're losing the window."

Wisps of pink began to encompass everybody, misting to life and swirling in a giant orb.

"The Stone belongs to me." Lion-O said, laying his hand on her chest, "And I will have it."

There was a spark of light, something small, but it exploded outward, clashing against the Spirit Stone's shield, drowning everything in a bright, blinding light.

And then there was only darkness.

---

Lion-O had braced himself for an explosion, a maelstrom. . . but there was nothing.

As the seconds ticked by, and he deemed it safe, Lion-O lowered his arms from where he'd thrown them up to protect himself. Erica and Sever were nowhere to be seen, and the other Cats were just a handful of feet away from him. It was pitch black around him, but he could see himself and the other Cats perfectly fine, despite the lack of lighting.

"What happened?" Tygra asked, "Was something amazing supposed to happen that I missed?"

Almost as if on cue, the darkness shifted, and the world began to rearrange itself-

Until the darkness cracked, sounding rather like glass.

Lion-O edged closer to the other Cats, shepherding them all into a loose circle, forcibly pushing Kit and Kat into it. He had to ignore the heated glares the kittens threw his way. When they were older, they'd understand. What he did, he did for them. In time, they'd come to see that. But for now, he had to focus on what was happening.

"I don't like this." Panthro murmured.

"I don't either." Lion-O said. "Where's Sever?"

For a moment, all seemed still.

Until the broken, jarred pieces of glass began to move, grating against one another, as though they were cogs in some great machine. The cracks widened, growing larger, and voices began to whisper through the cracks.

And even more disturbingly, eyes.

Thousands upon thousands of eyes.

The voices began to grow louder, but they were incomprehensible. They were thousands of people speaking at once. Some cried. Some spoke. Some screamed.

The glass cracked again.

Lion-O felt a shiver crawl down his spine. He didn't like this place. Not one bit. They needed to get out of here.

Something dripped onto his arm, and he glanced down, damn near jumping out of his skin when he saw the sticky redness of blood. The heavy tang of copper stained the air a moment later, and more drips followed, but they quickly developed into an ooze, and then a waterfall. The voices got louder, the cracks becoming more pronounced.

"We have to get out of here!" Cheetara shouted, fighting to be heard over the din. She reached for her staff, and Lion-O watched as the cleric startled in surprise. "My staff! It's gone!"

"So's my whip!"

"Omens!"

"Well. I still have my arms." Panthro said cheerfully.

Lion-O tried to suppress a shiver of disgust when he felt blood pulsing over his feet, quickly becoming ankle-deep. The cracks grew steadily larger.

"Then feel free to walk up to the walls and punch them, Panthro." Tygra offered helpfully. "I'm sure that'll make things better."

"Look!" Kit cried.

"There's a light!"

Kat grabbed his hand.

"Let's go!"

Lion-O didn't have to be told twice, nor did any other Cat. As a unit, they began to sludge through the blood, the darkness, and the shadows. Lion-O's skin was crawling, and his mouth went dry as they neared the source of the light. It looked like a door, set into the glass-shadow-wall, leading to a white place beyond that he couldn't see.

But at the moment, Lion-O didn't care. So long as they left this madness behind, he didn't care.

The voices grew louder, laced with fear, with hate, with rage. They were drowning out every thought in his own head, screaming and crying and begging and pleading. . .

Panthro and Cheetara were the first through the door. Kit and Kat followed Tygra through, and Lion-O waded, the blood quickly reaching up to his knees, his progress slowed, hands grabbing at his ankles through the cracks, determined to weigh him down, drag him into the dark-

Lion-O stumbled through the doorway. He pinwheeled for balance, staggering and almost falling on his feet, but he whirled around, watching as a door slammed shut, shutting them away from the blood, the shadows, the glass, and the screams. He stared at the door, the buzzing in his ears refusing to fade, his heart still pounding in his chest. What in Thundera had that hell been?!

But. . . but he was safe.

And the blood was disappearing, flaking away in a very disturbing manner. But it left no stains, and the smell was beginning to fade, as though it had never existed.

Everyone was safe, as he glanced around, taking in their awestruck, dumb expressions of wonder. . . Wait. . . what?

Instead of being locked inside of a glass dome of cracking glass and blood, he was in a sunny and. . . very alien environment.

He was in a forest meadow, of that he was sure. But it wasn't anywhere on Third Earth, he was positive. Was. . . was this experience like Leo's? But instead of being shoved into his ancestor's body, he was very much present in his own. Lion-O blinked as he looked around him, trying to take it all in. He was smelling things he'd never smelled before. Some of them were good, but others were just too foreign and off.

There were plants, flowers, and trees he'd never laid eyes on before. He could feel them. Touch them.

With Leo, he'd experienced everything through a filter. Though he had existed in his ancestor's memory, he had not been his ancestor. He'd felt sensations through a filter of sorts. This was decidedly different.

"What. . . is this?" Tygra asked.

Cheetara shook her head, and Panthro shrugged, both of them appearing to be at a loss for words. When his brother looked to him, Lion-O lifted up his gauntlet.

"It's. . . the Stone?" He guessed, though he had no idea how the Spirit Stone could conjure such illusions. But it sat in the crossguard, glimmering and brimming with light and energy.

"In part." A voice intoned, grass crunching under their feet. Sever appeared, rounding a tree and batting away a branch. Unlike the Cats, he hardly looked mesmerized by what was around him. Sever looked. . . dusty. Like he'd been walking through ash, and he, too, was covered in that same flaky blood. But unlike the Cats, he seemed to be covered head to toe in it.

Had he been stuck in the black glass as well?

"My technology. Your Stone. Her mind. They're all intricately woven together right now. You'll see. My apologies for the abrupt entry. My calibrations were merely guesses. I'm glad you're here." He brushed at his clothing and armor, dispelling the ash and the blood.

"The dark place?" Kit asked.

"You were there too?" Kat continued.

Sever nodded. "I was. This is - and will be - our safehaven. It took me a minute to calibrate correctly. . . If you are curious for the loss of your weaponry, do not be. But this psyche is fragile. More damage would not be a wise course of action. Now, we need to rouse her. . . Human! Let us begin. Show me the truth!"

Well, at least he knew their weapons were alright.

As if summoned, Lion-O heard footsteps. From behind them.

Erica popped out of some brush behind them, startling everybody. Lion-O hadn't been expecting a sneak attack of any kind. He reached for Omens, biting out a sharp curse when he realized it wasn't there. Erica bolted past all of them, and quicker than a blur, the human swooped in and picked up Kit, whirling her around.

Lion-O gaped.

What he was seeing was impossible. It was just. . . beyond belief. Back when she'd been Echo, she'd never been this affectionate with the kittens. And the longer Lion-O stared, the more he came to realize he was staring at a perfect hybrid of the two.

This was Erica.

And Echo.

She was a perfect juxtaposition of both, wrapped up in one. . . blonde? Yes. Her hair was now blonde, and her eyes were longer blue, but the dark shade of green he'd seen before. He felt off-centered as he stared at her, trying to come to terms with what he was seeing. He was so used to seeing her hair a wispy, pale white. But this girl had Echo's smile, although Erica brought a degree of maturity to her eyes.

The human paused, setting Kit down and kneeling in front of her, grinning and flashing stumpy, white teeth.

"And how is one of my favorite kittens today, hmm?"

Kit stood there, obviously feeling as disarmed as Lion-O was. Kat stepped forward, opening his mouth and reaching out to touch Erica, but Erica snatched at him in millisecond, wrapping them up in her arms and pinning them down.

"Nice try, but you're going to have to be faster than that!" And without another word, she began to torment them by. . . ruffling their hair. The kittens were beyond shocked, laying there and enduring her punishment simply because they were very clearly baffled.

"This is just. . . impossible." Tygra said, the first to find his voice.

"What in the blazes are we watching?" Panthro continued.

Lion-O shook his head in disbelief. There was no maliciousness, no insanity or hostility in Erica's eyes. Only. . . only love.

Sever stepped forward, and Erica laughed as she worked the kittens over. She was talking, excited words spilling out of her a mile a minute, but Lion-O didn't hear a single bit of it. Although he could understand her, his mind was droning at the sight before him. It was impossible for him to believe that the human in front of him was so genuine. She radiated happiness and warmth that was unparalleled to Echo's.

He was so confused. And he hated it. After everything she'd done, she didn't deserve to be happy.

"You think such insanity was there from the beginning, do you?" Sever asked, startling him. Had Sever been looking at him this whole time? He glanced at the necromancer, and watched as the alien approached Erica.

"It's a sickness," Sever continued. "It sets in after despair and grief have left wounds large enough for it to fester in. It infects and corrupts everything." The necromancer leaned forward, casting a dark shadow over Erica. She glanced up, stopping her torture of the kittens. Kit and Kat laid there, staring up at the two.

Sever reached down, plucking the kittens out of her grasp.

Erica hadn't even noticed. She'd continued her ministrations. . . on ghosts.

If Lion-O thought he'd been shocked before, he had no idea what to call this new emotion. Two forms condensed in the air, taking Kit and Kat's place on the ground. They were Cats, there was no doubt about it, but very unlike any kind of Cat Lion-O had ever seen. Their features were far more alien, more. . . feral. And they were a little taller than Kit and Kat, their fur a different color, and they were wearing uniforms that looked remotely like what Erica had on. Their features heavily resembled the Wily twins, looking all the world like they might have been cousins. . . or relatives.

"Who is that?" Kit cried in Sever's hand, pointing down.

"That's not me!" Kat said, sounding equally as unbalanced.

Lion-O felt wheels in his mind beginning to turn. When he'd lived out Leo's (short) memories, he'd seen animals under Mumm-Ra's care. But this. . . was before Mumm-Ra. Did that mean. . . ?

"They're our ancestors. Before Leo. Before Mumm-Ra." He said aloud, swallowing against a thickness in his throat.

Humans and animals. . . had once co-existed with each other?!

It was a terrifying thought to follow. He wished it wasn't true. But it had to be. The evidence was on the ground, just a few feet away from him.

"Astute." Sever replied, placing the kittens down on the ground. "Very astute, Lion-O. Humanity and animals once existed alongside each other. But these are not the answers I seek. I'm not interested in your happiness, human. Live our your feel-good memories another day. Show me the cause. It is my right to know."

Erica hadn't looked up a Sever, hadn't even seemed to realize he was speaking to her at all.

Lion-O tensed when he heard glass crack, and all around him, the meadow froze. It began to crack away, dissipating inch by inch, until only Erica and the strange Wily-twins look-a-likes remained.

In a millisecond, they were back in the black-glass room, surrounded by nothing but shadows. Lion-O glanced around nervously, expecting the freakshow of blood and glass, but the darkness remained intact. The broken pane of glass, holding the still image of Erica, floated away from them, hovering in the dark.

And as it did, it revealed Erica - their Erica - standing behind it. Her hair was chopped short, messy, and was a stark white against the black. She stared at the glass shard containing her image, her expression shuttered and impassive.

". . . How did you sort me out?" She asked, quietly, not looking at Sever.

"It was difficult," Sever replied, "But a human psyche is not an impossible task to sort through. I got as as close as possible."

"Echo!" Kat cried out, running at her, "Are you okay?"

"We were worried-"

The kittens were running at her, ready to glomp onto her again.

"Don't." Erica said, her tone tense.

The twins were quick, but Lion-O and Tygra were quicker. Both brothers snagged the Wily kittens before either of them could break rank.

Erica's voice didn't sound stable. And the way she was holding herself - muscles clenched, hands balled into fists at her side. . . something wasn't right.

"Human," Cheetara spoke, slowly and calmly, "What is going on?"

She took in a few steadying breaths, hands clenching and unclenching rhythmically at her sides.

"If what. . . I assume is going to happen. . . Please don't let them look." She replied finally, ". . . They deserve that much, at least."

"Echo!" Kit bristled. "We're fine! Stop protecting us all the time!"

"Yeah!" Kat growled, "Let us go! We can handle it!"

Erica's eyes dropped to the floor. Her knuckles were white.

"We're not them!" Kat yelled. "We're not those two Cats!"

"We're Wily Kit and Wily Kat and don't you forget it! We're different!"

Erica smiled. It was a fragile, small thing.

". . . Then, do you honestly want to know?" She asked, her voice a small whisper.

Lion-O decided he'd been quiet long enough.

"Yes." He said. "We do."

Erica moved.

Or. . . She glitched reality.

One moment she was standing away from them, by the broken glass shard, and the next she was standing behind Sever, their backs close together. Sever hadn't moved - it seemed as though he'd been expecting this. Wires began to descend, snaking up Erica's shirt, hooking into her spine. If there was pain, Erica showed no indication.

She scanned every Cat present, her expression grim.

"Then I'll show you everything. But don't look away." Erica said, her eyes flicking down to Kit and Kat, "Don't close your eyes. Not even for a second."

Kit and Kat stopped squirming, standing still and resolute.

"We won't." They vowed, speaking together.

Her eyes flicked to Lion-O, and for a long moment, they stared each other down. Lion-O narrowed his eyes at her. There was nothing this human had that could surprise him. Absolutely nothing. He wasn't afraid to face anything she had. He'd come to terms with the talk about aliens and Terra and humans. War didn't scare him.

"And neither will we." Lion-O said, his words icy as he stared at Erica. Something on her back flashed, and the darkness pulsed in response.

"If that's what you want." She said, turning on her heel. She walked around Sever, the prehensile wires following her lead.

She reached out into the black, and a piece of it broke away. A shard of gray glass drifted to her hand, and when she touched it, it began to unfold. It was quick to do so, encompassing them all in another world in a heartbeat. Lion-O saw a gray, rocky landscape, speckled through with debris, technology. . . and bodies. The air hung thick with the stench of burning ozone, dead corpses, and war.

Some were human. Others were. . . not. Lion-O did not believe he'd ever seen them before, but they were certainly no animal he'd ever encountered. To be entirely honest, they looked remotely like Sever. Were these. . . Terrans?

Kit and Kat paled as they stared at the scene before them, but true to their word, they did not look away.

In the distance, Lion-O heard the familiar sounds of battle, faraway, but steadily drawing closer. Gunshots. Explosions. The hum and whir of technology. The cries of people fighting and dying. He glanced around, watching as a bank of gray rock lit up with an explosion, and though he could hear it, feel the shockwave of it, his instincts told him he wasn't in any danger.

He was not in Leo's memories, but Erica's. He was a spectator, nothing more.

Erica continued to walk, the wires trailing in the air behind her. Lion-O stared at them, counting at least twenty connected to her spine, and five thicker cables plugged into the base of her neck. She glanced around, looking, and then her eyes lit on a rock, half-burned, half-glowing with strange runes and a language Lion-O didn't understand. As if they were in some sort of hologram, a muted light illuminated the spot she was staring at, giving it more attention.

Erica winked into existence again.

But she was younger. Much younger. Probably not but one or two years older than Kit or Kat.

Her chest was heaving, half-sobs, half-choked gasps for breath leaving her. Both of her hands were wrapped tightly over her mouth in an effort to stem the noise. Tears were pouring, unchecked, down her cheeks, and her eyes were wide, horror written in every line and crease of her face. She wore roughly the same uniform as she did now, albeit this one was decorated differently, symbols and human writing emblazoned on her sleeves and chest. It was hard to make out, though.

She was covered in blood, some of it hers from obvious wounds, but most of it. . . not.

A voice whispered around them, quiet at first, but slowly gaining volume.

"I can't do this. I can't go. I'm scared. I'm so scared. . . Walker's right there. If I reach out, I can touch him. Why aren't you moving, Walker? His blood's all over my hands. The gun's covered in it. What am I going to do? They're getting closer. . ."

With a start, Lion-O recognized the voice as Erica's. She was younger, and the desperate, panicked tone distorted it. . . something in his gut churned. In the distance, something exploded, momentarily peppering the sky with red and yellow, but it faded. Rocks pelted her, and right when Lion-O thought the attack had ended, several more, steadily growing closer, began to tear up the ground.

"Stop! Stop it stop it stop it!" Young Erica cried, clamping her hands over her head in a vain attempt to defend herself.

A pool of blood began to form in front of Erica, flooding over to her boots. The human stared down at the source of it.

"W-Walker. . . please. . . they're coming, I'm scared. We gotta go. Walker? W-Walker?"

Erica pulled her hands away from her mouth, and she reached for the bloody pool. When her hands fell into the air, Lion-O saw something - a distorted figure. Like a glitchy computer readout, reality readjusted itself, adding to the scene in front of them. A corpse. Another human was laying in the dirt, very obviously dead from the piece of shrapnel lodged in his chest. He looked different than Erica, obviously male, but older. His skin was darker, his hair was black, and his eyes stared up at the sky, glassy. It was very obvious that he was dead.

Erica shook him, not seeming to notice.

"Walker? Please. Please, Walker. We gotta go."

Another explosion hit the rock she'd propped herself up against. It threw her off balance and onto the dead human. Young Erica squealed and scrambled back, gasping for air. When she managed to sit back up, she stared down at herself, at her hands.

She looked ready to scream when she realized she was covered in blood.

A shadow fell over her.

There came another glitchy projection, and then another human winked into existence. His skin was even darker than Walker's, his hair black, his skin pockmarked in scars. He was older, maybe by nine or ten years, his uniform clean and lacking a single stain. His eyes scanned Erica, and the dead human, before turning back to her with disdain.

"Stow it, soldier." They said, their voice sounding distant and faraway, "All of that grief. All of that rage. Lock it up and erase it, bit by bit. And then. . . you fight. If you can't handle that, then turn your gun on yourself. Humankind has no use for worthless things."

He had a gun strapped to his body. As he spoke, he pulled it off of himself and threw it at Erica carelessly before he walked off, showing them his back.

Two black boxes were mounted there, signifying he was part of Erica's unit.

Or. . . not. Lion-O looked at Erica, searching for her tattoo, for those same black boxes, but he could not find one.

The young Erica looked up, watching as the older human disappeared, walking to the war. He only made it a few steps before he disappeared, the same glitchy warp taking him away. She stared after him, hiccuping, her entire body shaking, her hands clenching at his gun.

". . . I see." Sever murmured.

"What?" Tygra asked. "The war? There's nothing to see."

Sever pointed at their Erica, who was standing there, watching the memory, her eyes glassy and faraway.

"This was the beginning. . . of a kind. Isn't it, human?"

Erica somehow tore her eyes away from the scene, and to Sever.

"This instilled my drive, yes. Do you know how demeaning that was? He called me a thing. A worthless thing. And he gave me a gun so I could kill myself if I couldn't hold it together. And. . . Walker died. He was my only friend, and he died getting me to that rock. Keeping me safe. My first mission, and I killed him. I thought I was ready. We both made promises that we'd be careful. And look what happened. I was ready to die. But he. . . he didn't look at me with sympathy or kindness. He just. . . to him, I was incompetent."

She stared at her child-self, falling silent. The sounds of the war began to grow closer, not more than a hundred or so feet away.

"And what happened?" Sever pressed.

"Something snapped."

Young Erica's hands and body stopped shaking. She reached down, slipped the gun's strap over her head, and held it as solidly as she could. In half-practiced movements, she ejected the clip, and then slammed it back into place. When she cocked the gun, it sounded impossibly loud.

She wiped at her face, smearing blood and dirt on her skin.

The tears stopped.

She stood.

And she got up from the rock and began to run to the war.

As with the meadow, Lion-O watched as she froze, and then the glass began to recede. It became a broken pane of glass, as with the first memory. It sucked away the world, leaving them in the dark. Sever nodded his head.

"The middle." Sever demanded, optics paling. "Show me that."

Erica reached out to the shadows again, another shard of glass responding to her call. When its world unfolded, Lion-O automatically wanted to groan. He was in a jungle, and the heat and humidity were pressing against his fur, making him want to find a pool of water and dunk inside. He watched with rapt attention as one section of jungle changed, morphing into a staircase, leading down.

A computer glitch, and then Erica - a much older, much more present-day Erica - appeared, sweat dripping off her face. She had a tube stretching into her mouth, connected to a fluid bag on her hip. She bore her Black Pyrmid insignias, tell-tale black boxes mounted onto her back. Again, her uniform was altered slightly, looking different than the one she wore currently, but the changes were minor.

"Capppptttaiiinnnnn." She called, standing on the edge of the staircase and peering downwards. "Helloooo, Captain. Earth to Captain, you down there?"

"Yes." A man replied, moments later, his voice echoing from below.

Older Erica stood there, gazing around, looking impatient.

"Then I'm coming down to get out of the heat. You should've invited me down. Rude!"

Older Erica walked around the hole and to the steps, taking them carefully. Instinctively, one of her hands wrapped around the hilt of a gun, ready to draw it at a moment's notice. The world shifted, following her down, into a strange-looking antechamber. Before her laid a long hallway, studded through with glowing crystals to provide light. Chewing on the tube in her mouth, Older Erica peered around, taking it in, looking puzzled.

She proceeded down the hallway, until she stopped before a door. Another glitch, and a human joined her. It took Lion-O a moment to recognize him as the one that had berated Young Erica, as he was older, taller, and more battle-worn. He stood before the door, staring at it, as though transfixed.

"Well. We found a door. Won't command be oh-so-happy to report this? Fun. I'll log it-"

The man reached out, grabbing Erica's hands, stopping her from typing on a piece of technology. "Not yet." He told her, eyes never leaving the door.

"Captain?" She asked, puzzled.

"Riley, stay here. I'm going to explore. We'll report to command if it's anything of interest."

Erica stared at the human, bemused. "That's. . . that's against protocol. My great Captain, wanting to break protocol? Y'know what. I'm game. Nice to see you cutting loose! I'll stand guard while you go in. Have fun. Tell me if there's any cool Terran tech inside. I call dibs." Erica ribbed him in the side, not noticing when the human refused to move, refused to acknowledge anything she was doing.

He was mesmerized by the rock door. His hands stretched out, pressing against it, and it cracked down the middle, swinging inward to permit him entry.

Older Erica found the closest pillar, leaned back against it, and laced her fingers behind her head. She sucked on the fluid tube, humming to herself, nodding her head to the beat.

And that was there the memory ended, the scene freezing, Erica's head stopping mid-bob. The scene began to fold in on itself, returning back to the glass. It shrank down to the size of Erica's palm, and she held it, staring down at it, looking pained.

Sever laughed, the sound startling everyone. It was bitter and caustic. Had he the capability to smile, Lion-O was sure he would have.

"You stood there. You stood there and watched as he entered our Sacrificial Chamber. And you did nothing. You single-handedly engineered your own demise."

Erica didn't get angry. She just stared at the glass, and eventually nodded.

"Yeah," She agreed, tone complacent, "I did."

Sever was chuckling as his optics brightened.

"Oh, how precious. I've seen all I needed. Time to end the construct."

Wait.

That was it?

---

"End it?" Lion-O asked, incredulous, "That didn't answer anything!"

"Yes, it did." Sever replied easily. "It answered every question I had, Lion-O. I needed to understand how this began, how it continued, and how it ended. I entered at the ending. There is no more use looking at these broken fragments. We can proceed to mending the Stone."

Lion-O glanced between him and Erica, trying to understand what the hell was going on. He'd been watching Erica's very fragmented memories, but he understood none of them. She'd been at war, sure. A war against the Terran race - a race Soul Sever had once been a part of. But everything else was still an enigma. What about those two kittens that looked strangely like Kit and Kat? What about animals in general? How did they tie into this tapestry?

Sever lifted his hand, and the blackness shivered.

"Wait!" Lion-O yelled.

Sever paused, his head swiveling to him.

"You have found your truth, Soul Sever, but we haven't found ours." Lion-O told him, "If I am to follow Thunderian customs, and truly render judgement on this human, then consider this her trial. Before her fate is decided, I must - as King - weigh all factors."

She's slaughtered animals in cold blood.

She'd aided Mumm-Ra.

As far as Lion-O was concerned, she was damned.

But he would obey the customs of his people.

Sever had yet to speak.

"It is how we deem criminals to a fitting punishment." Tygra continued. "And without all the facts. . . "

Lion-O glanced down, taking in the Cats. They were all nodding their heads in agreement, save for the Wily twins, who were staring at the dark. They were fragile, but seemed to be holding together. He had participated in many battles, and had seen Thundera fall, but from what he'd seen of the human conflict with Terrans (which wasn't much, granted), it looked bloody and packed with death.

Sever was silent, his hand still raised to "end the construct."

"He's going to kill me," Erica spoke, lifting her hands and sending the glass shard away to join the others. "Terran, you and I both know I am not redeemable. I'm soaked in sin so thoroughly I could drown in it."

Lion-O stared at Erica. For once, he couldn't figure out her play. Was she helping them? Was she trying to manipulate them? He didn't know. She didn't look like she was up to nefarious purposes. She looked. . . resigned. Maybe she had realized that one way or another, they were getting what they wanted.

"They want to know the extent of it." She told him. "They want to know how deep my roots go."

Sever lowered his hand.

He chuckled again.

"Oh, ThunderCats. I know my truth, but you seek yours? You wish to judge her? Then let us judge her. As thoroughly as possible. I'll ensure nothing goes unspoken."

The blackness around them stabilized.

Erica turned, facing Lion-O. She lifted her gaze to meet his. "Where should I start?" She asked.

"At the beginning." Lion-O demanded.

For a moment, Erica seemed to consider it. But then she nodded her head.

"Alright. I was born on Terra, when we'd landed there some tens - if not a hundred or two - years ago-"

"False." Sever interrupted. "You were not born. You were created."

At that, Erica rolled her eyes. "No, I was born. We just. . . changed the methods a little."

"Explain." Panthro urged.

Erica flicked her wrists, and several shards appeared, but instead of encompassing them all in their own worlds, they simply showed fractured pictures, like they were images seen through Erica's eyes. A human woman was most prominent, her belly swollen with a small child.

"Humans carry a kid for nine months. We needed soldiers, and we couldn't afford to have men and women be incapacitated for so long. We needed them. Quickly. Normal growth rate is 18 years to adulthood."

Erica flicked her wrist, the glass changing pictures. There was a human woman and a human man displayed on them, both bearing striking resemblances to. . .

"They're your parents." Tygra guessed.

Erica nodded. "Yes. Hayden and Rebecca Riley. My mother and father. Cultivating DNA samples, they had me. They died when I was four, during a fight on the western frontline."

Nobody expressed condolences, not that Erica looked like she was expecting any. Another flick, and the pictures changed, the glass combining together to form a larger, much more expansive picture (memory?) of what looked like a laboratory. There were rows upon countless rows of clear glass tubes, containing. . . baby humans? Machines tended to them, monitors hooked next to the tubes keeping track of (what Lion-O guessed) was transpiring inside of the tube.

"So we eliminated the pregnancy aspect. We took DNA samples between two willing partners," Erica shot a hot glance at Sever, who appeared to want to interject, "And instead trusted technology. Changes were made to our DNA, to ensure we would grow faster, stronger, and smarter. Before this technique was refined, an average human might only live to 86 years. We eliminated birth defects, diseases, and encouraged strength, intelligence, and aptitude.

"So yes, I was born. My mother and father still submitted samples and I was raised as any human was. We just altered the circumstances for how that birth would happen."

It was unnatural.

How deep would the perversions of the human race go?

First they'd invaded Terra, and then they had turned to technology to aid their war.

He could understand making exceptions for special cases, such as. . . his mother. If such technology had existed on Third Earth, Lion-O was sure his mother would have been able to use it. He would've thought nothing less of her. But the humans had turned technology into a way to weaponize their children before they'd even been born.

But the picture Lion-O was getting was becoming clearer. Humans were a war-mongering, parasitic race that had unjustly begun a war with an alien civilization simply because they'd needed a new home. They'd weaponized themselves to ensure victory. Had the humans turned on themselves? Why had Sever wanted to see Erica and her Captain entering something called the Sacrificial Chamber? There were a few more strokes of a brush to complete this painting, and Lion-O was determined to see it through.

"And how do we tie into this?" Lion-O demanded. "Why have you turned against us?"

Erica gave a small 'hmm.' She was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts, before she spoke again.

"I heard someone once say that god made us in his image. I suppose. . . we made you in ours."

Lion-O narrowed his eyes at her. "What?"

Erica flicked her wrists, and thousands of glass shards hovered above her, revealing. . . revealing. . .

"What are those?" Kit said, the first to speak, her voice small.

"Those can't be. . ." Kat continued.

"Are. . . those. . . ?"

"Animals." Lion-O breathed, "They're animals."

"Your true ancestors." Erica replied. "Far too many to count. You evolved on Earth, much like we did. We took as many genetic samples from every living plant and animal species from Earth on our ship when the time came to leave. But when the war on Terra grew too bloody, we decided to create new soldiers. Countless testing, experiments, and tweaking later, humanity finally found an endless source of soldiers. The Weaponized Animal Regime was our answer to keep humans from going extinct in the war. We called it the WAR initiative. And it worked."

Another twitch.

An array of animals, all bearing the same feral resemblances of the two kittens Erica had been playing with minutes before. Armored. Suited. Training. Released into battle when they were young. Far too young. Beaten. Whipped. Chained.

Lion-O felt disgust and anger bubbling in his gut. He glared at Erica, wanting to attack her, but restrained himself.

"They weren't trusted with guns, and were instead given swords. That was to help reduce any chance of an uprising. Considered. . . lesser by humanity, they were kept in sub-par environments, regularly beaten, belittled, and outcasted. Humans were at the top of the food chain, after all. And we'd created you."

"You sound so pleased," Lion-O spat. "You used innocent animals in your disgusting human technology to fight in your stead. You were barbarians."

Erica looked at him.

She was smiling. It was a small, fragile thing.

"Siberius. Masai. Copper. Caliche - countless others, too many to name. They were so precious, so innocent. Every day we spent together. . . they were mine. They were my family." Her voice tapered off, sounding watery.

"You actively stood by while so many died." Tygra said, his voice cold. "You were not innocent."

She shook her head.

"I. . . I fell in love with Masai."

"WHAT?" Lion-O snarled. What lies were she spouting now?!

"Could've fooled me. If you loved animals so much, why did you not protect them? Why did you kill them?!"

Erica looked as though she wanted to cry, but wisely, she did not.

"I can show you." She said, quietly. "I can show you everything."

Lion-O wanted to tell her no, to keep her memories to herself, but a glass shard exploded outward in a dizzying speed before he could protest. He blinked, the sun blinding him momentarily.

Young Erica stood there, no more than six or seven, opposite a black panther, who was passing her two small cubs.

"Uhm, are you sure I should be holding them?"

The panther smiled, thrusting them forward. Young Erica scrambled to hold them, looking around nervously. "Uhm. Uhm. I don't know how to take care of babies. I don't. . ." She trailed off as she looked at them, her face softening. A tiny, sandy-colored hand reached out to wrap around a strand of her hair.

"Oh. They're. . . really cute."

The scene fractured, displaying multiple memories. The cubs grew up with her. She watched them, played with them, even aided them in learning to use a sword. One scene in particular zoomed to the forefront. The kittens, much older, probably around six or seven themselves, were in the meadow Lion-O and the others had entered in, but they'd relocated. They knelt at the base of a very large, beautiful tree, capping a small hill. Underneath it, the Wily look-a-likes were there, holding onto each other, shaking and horrified.

A glitch, and Young Erica was there, running up the hill, appearing to be about thirteen.

"Cali! Copper! Jesus, fuck, I finally found you! Are you okay? Are you alright?" She slid to her knees before the pair of them, reaching out to touch them.

"Stop!" Came a female voice. It was the girl kitten, and when she spoke, her voice was different. Accented. Her voice was more rough and gravelly. "Get away from us!"

"No!" Young Erica replied calmly, "I won't. It was your first mission, I know. It's scary. You're scared, I understand-"

"No you don't!" The male replied, "You don't understand! All of you humans used us as bait! To take the gunfire! To take the bombs and explosions! You don't care about us! Admit it - you DON'T CARE!"

"I do!" Young Erica protested, "I care because I love-"

With a vicious snarl, the girl kitten attacked her, claws flashing. With a savage claw, she raked it down Erica's face, digging in deep over temple and scraping down her eye and through to most of her cheek. Blood flood, dripping off Young Erica's face in a stream.

The kitten sat there, rage dying away in a heartbeat. She stared at her hands, at her claws, tears coursing over her furry cheeks.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The kitten repeated endlessly, the words breaking apart into sobs.

Young Erica wrenched her eye shut, the blood dribbling down. Instead of striking back, instead of seeking revenge, she wrapped the kitten up in her arms, holding her.

"Shhh. Shhh, it's okay. You're okay. I'm here. You're fine. You're alive. The both of you are. It was an accident. I'm not going to tell, I promise. I got it out on the battlefield. I'm here, Cali. I'm here." Young Erica spoke quietly, soothing the kitten. She rubbed at her back. "If you ever hit somebody, hit me. I'm never going to tell. I promise."

The boy - Copper - tentatively reached out to Young Erica, who responded by adding him to the hug. She rocked the kittens gently as they sobbed, clinging to her.

The image froze, and the sound stilled.

"I can't imagine how scared they were." Erica said, her voice delicate, "Their first mission, and their assigned detail used them like meat shields. Everybody did! Everybody thought they were. . . Just because they weren't human, that they were somehow beneath us. It infuriated me to no end. Cats, dogs, jackals, panthers - every animal was full of life. Or personality. They were every inch equal to us, and they couldn't see that."

Lion-O refused to show emotion, even when the glass receded and showed a hundred different pictures of her and the kittens. And other animal-people as well. Every image showed a frozen smile or a laugh, sometimes tears. Worry. But it did little more than make him angry and confused. Why the blazes should he care? So what, she'd been allied to animals?

"So what?" He said, calmly, "A lifetime of murdering is redeemed because you raised and cared for two kittens?"

"No." Erica said, "But. . . but I dedicated my life to living alongside them. They were family. But I wasn't. . . I wasn't strong enough. Ever. The war. . . the war almost took Masai because I was too weak."

Her words were just pouring out of her now. A confession or a lifting of a burden, Lion-O didn't know. Did Erica even know they were there anymore? The glass began to spin, reacting to Erica's emotions. Lion-O barely had enough time to look at one before he was looking at another.

The meadow disappeared. The glass fractured.

A battlefield replaced it.

"And tell them what prompted your insanity, human." Sever said, speaking up, his optics paling. "How you defiled yourself."

She complied.

Young Erica glitched into reality, cursing and running, gun drawn.

"Command, this is Riley! Ranks are broken on point Alpha 779. I repeat, ranks are broken-"

A laser streaked out of nowhere, striking her in the leg and crippling her. She cried out in pain as she fell down, her gun clattering away. There were no boxes on her back, or swords strapped to her thighs. Just her gun, which she'd dropped.

A glitch, and a Terran appeared, wrapped up in armor and bearing a sword the likes of which Lion-O had never seen. It screeched something in anger in a language Lion-O didn't understand. It lifted its sword, preparing to drive it into Young Erica, who was slowly staggering up to her feet.

Another glitch, and another armor-clad figure rushed in, getting between Young Erica and the Terran. The male figure rushed forward, swinging at the Terran with a sword of his own, but the Terran deflected it. A sharp, snarled growl revealed the figure to be an animal, an animal that had just lost his footing on the loose gravel due to the parry. The Terran, pressing their advantage, pierced the animal in the chest with its sword.

"NO!" Young Erica screamed. In a mad scramble, she crawled forward, seized the gun, cocked it, and fired.

The Terran went down in a flurry, and as the animal collapsed, Young Erica hobbled over to him, flopping onto the ground next to the downed animal. Blood was beginning to pour out of the wound at an alarming rate, the high-tech armor doing nothing to slow it. She grabbed him, tears gathering in her eyes. She pressed her hands against the wound, frenzied when his blood pulsed through her hands.

"No. No, no no, stay awake. Don't go to sleep. You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be fine, it's gonna be fine. Stay with me!" She tugged at a pouch on her hip and produced a medical kit. She was so panicked the most she could do was shove gauze onto the wound. It was quickly soaked through with blood.

"Stay awake," She pleaded, "Please. Please, god, help me. Somebody. SOMEBODY! Medic! MEDIC!"

The scene froze right before she screamed.

"I killed so many." Erica said, "Directly or indirectly. Humans. Animals. I was weak. . . I knew I had to get stronger. I almost lost him that day. I loved him so much, but I was so weak I almost lost him. So I signed myself over to the Black Pyramid. I could protect everyone, then. Even if it meant forfeiting my humanity."

Lion-O wanted to tell her to stop, that he didn't need to see any more, but she was so worked up, the scene was changing before could even open his mouth.

The glass fractured, twisting into yet another scene with dizzying speed.

A dark-skinned human was sitting down in a chair, her hands shaking, her brown eyes wide with tears. A long, black brain was pleated down, falling to her waist. They were situated in some form of an office, technology oozing out of the walls, monitors and vitals hooked into it. The human, much older than Erica, was wearing some sort of outfit that was different than that of a soldier. She had technology clipped to her hips, legs, and neck.

On the table in front of her, there was gauze, scissors, needles, and an assortment of other medical supplies.

A glitch, and then Young Erica was there, her hands on the table, her brow furrowed.

"I have to do it. I signed the consent form. It's happening."

"I c-can't," The human woman answered, "I can't go back there again. Please. Not again. I signed an oath to heal, not to harm. I'm murdering people!" The human woman began to shake, her tears spilling over her cheeks.

Young Erica shook her head. "It's not murder if I signed the consent form! I'm giving them permission to do the procedure!"

The human woman shook her head. "I'm a doctor," She said, her voice shaking, "A surgeon. Do you know how many I've failed on? I'm not doing it again. I'm not!"

Young Erica, in response, straightened, took in a deep breath, and then crossed around the table. She took the woman's hands in her own and clenched them tightly.

"Halia, you're the only doctor I've ever trusted. And I know that you were there when the procedure first succeeded. You headed that team. If I go in there and you're not operating, I know I'm going to die. But with you there. . . I'll survive."

The doctor - Halia - looked at her. "I'm tired of playing god. We've broken so many of the laws of nature. Harvesting Terran souls to bypass your humanity? I'm going to hell for helping refine it. You won't survive. The procedure has a 95% mortality rate. There's a reason why so few of the Black Pyramid exist, Erica. You've killed yourself, child. You signed yourself to braindeath. You say you trust me, so trust me. You are going to die-"

"No." Erica said, staring at her, "I won't. But I will if you're not in there. I need you, Halia. Make me strong."

A fracture.

A shift.

Erica was horizontally, her head shaved, tubes and wires leading into her body. She was suspended in the air, technology keeping her afloat, holding her still. She was completely naked, covered only by a thin, paper-like shift. Her hands were clenched at her sides, and the monitors showed a jump, like her heart had skipped a beat. Another heartbeat later, and hazy humans filtered in, distorted and blurry, as if Erica couldn't remember what they looked like. They were covered in strange smocks, their faces and hands concealed and covered by tech-embedded fabric.

A low drone of voices filtered over them all, covering the room. Young Erica swallowed, nervously.

A hand reached out and touched her, squeezing her shoulder.

Relief filtered over her face.

"Halia," Young Erica croaked. "Thank you."

"Don't worry, Riley." Halia replied, sliding a needle into her elbow, "I'm going to take care of you."

Erica's eyes slid shut.

A fracture.

Another shift.

Copper and Caliche were in a dimly-lit room. Both kittens, dressed in war attire, and appearing to be fatigued (like they'd just come off the field), were leaning over what looked like a hospital bed. Worry creased both of their faces, and the kittens fluttered to and fro, looking like they wanted to reach out and touch who was laying on it, but they were afraid to do so.

A door slid open, echoing in the quiet room. Both kittens looked up, pausing just long enough to glance at each other, and then they left.

The view was no longer obstructed. Young Erica laid in the bed, but she looked. . . frail. She was completely naked, save for the hundreds of bandages plastered over every square inch of her. And what they didn't touch, the tubes, wires, and cables, did. They snaked into her mouth, her veins, her body. . . her back. Suspended by technology, Erica's spine was showcased. . . it glittered in the light, her humanity stripped away by the technology she'd embedded in herself.

A glitch.

An animal wrapped in armor stepped forward, sporting a multitude of bandages of his own on his chest and back.

It was the same animal that had saved her. He moved tenderly, favoring his wounds as he limped to Erica's beside.

Lion-O, caught in a lull of the memories, finally gathered his wits about him.

He knew this shadow. He knew this outline. He'd seen it before, he was sure of it. This same silhouette had defended Erica countless times.

The animal reached up, pressing some sort of button on his armor, and it responded, folding away from his face.

Lion-O felt his knees quiver.

The resemblances between him and this lion were uncanny. His "cousin" looked more feral, like Copper or Cali, sporting different features. But the hair, the fur. . . Leo and he could have been distant brothers, for all Lion-O knew. His mane was longer, slightly more unkempt, and hung around his face more. His eyes were a bright blue, just like his own, but he was shorter, and his muscles weren't as compact. He was just a year or two older than Erica. Younger than Lion-O.

This lion was garbed head-to-toe in futuristic armor, a large sword stowed neatly against his back. Blue eyes flickered over the prone human in front of him, and guarded concern made he inexplicable anger on his face soften.

The lion reached out, wanting to grab Erica's hand, but then pausing. Her hands were strapped to wires and wrapped in bandages. Finding a free inch of skin, he instead grabbed at her pinky finger, holding it tenderly in his own. He stared down at her like she was the most precious thing on the planet.

The other Cats had seemingly gotten their bearings amidst Erica's flurry of memories.

Lion-O shook his head. "She said. . . she said a name. Not Leo. It's. . . I can't remember it."

"She never called you Lion-O." Panthro said.

The lion's ears flicked, and he snatched his hand away from Erica's right as the door opened.

"Masai." A voice greeted.

It was the same one that had commanded Erica to fight or kill herself. It was thick, deep, and accented in a way that Lion-O had never heard.

"I believe you were asked to report to central command?"

The lion - Masai - tilted his head. His ears flicked back, and his eyes slitted. He appeared outwardly calm, but it was obvious he was far from happy.

He said nothing.

The other human circled around to Erica's bedside. He reached forward, ignoring how Masai tensed. The lion in question looked every bit as though he wanted to snarl and snap at the man. The human traced his finger over her shoulder, up to her neck, and touched part of the metallic spine that reached around. Erica's body twitched.

"When she wakes up, I will be her commanding officer. I'm always pleased to accept new blood in my ranks. I sense she will be a great asset - look at her. No coma. All those years ago, she heeded my advice well."

The human smiled at Masai.

The scene froze.

"T-That's. . . that's. . ." Cheetara said, her voice shaking, "That's Mumm-Ra."