21

"...and this one should be the trajectory of the thing, this says it's armed or not..." Cheetara was speaking in a soft, spacey tone that indicated she was talking to herself to sort things out. "Why can't they have this damned thing in Basic?" she said in a louder voice.

"These guys wouldn't lower themselves to that level," Snarf said. "These Mutants are more arrogant than the Lunattacks ever were!"

"You're right." Cheetara said, and went back to her musings.

They had been in there for twenty minutes only when there was a harsh banging. "Come on out of there, feline. You're only making things harder on yourself!" Cheetara scowled and tried to ignore the distracting voice when she heard it tell seomoene else that was apparently there to get the keys. "Snarf, take that chair over there and prop it under the latch. That ahould keep them out for a while. I hope." The chair was metal, and fit snugly under as the Snarf did as she asked. "I've almost got this thing figured out."

"Ohhh, hurry Cheetara!" Snarf wailed.

There was a clicking as the key was retrieved and the door unlocked, and then a curse and a rattling as they discovered their makeshift lock. "Come on, cat, you can't possibly help yourself by staying in there!"

If only he knew, Cheetara thought. "I've got it!" she said. "All right. Mathematics is the same in any language, and luckily the Plundaarians use the same numbering system as we do on Thundera and Third Earth." Cheetara went on to explain what she was doing, and although Snarf understood little of it, he did understand that what she was doing was helping her sort it out for the last time before she tried it. "Okay. I've aimed this hellish thing at a far planet of the system. Lynx-O's note did not say the explosions had to happen here, and from even the brief explanation of what was going on, I don't think it matters where it happens, but when. And now is the time."

***

In an endless world of sky, Bengali was half conscious. The young man was almost ready to tear himself apart if only to end the endless fall and stop the red tendrils of madness that were creeeping around his strained mind. He had been able to get enough water from the storms of this world, but he was weakening fast with no food and the exhaustion of being tense the whole time was taking its toll. All he saw was endless blue, sky without land. He tried to sleep as much as he could. That way he did not feel the despair, the horrible thought that he would never leave that awful world, that he would never walk on land again, or even see his friends before he perished for lack of food. And now he was halfway there, in that realm of mental nothingness that was sleep...or by this point simple unconsciousness brought on by exhaustion and hunger.

***

"What now?" Pumyra asked. It was hours after they trio had witnessed Jaga cast the Sword of Plundaar into the Chasm.

"Now we wait. It's all we can do." Lynx-O had his arm around the puma, sensing her deep sorrow, and feeling his own. But he was better trained in matters of the mind than his younger comrade, and he could deal with it. It was no more pleasant, but he could keep his mind from turning it over and over again. He could do nothing now to prevent what happened, and thinking about it would only hurt him.

Pumyra nodded numbly. "Lynx-O? Can we just...look around a little? I mean I know you said minimum contact, but still...I'll never see Thundera again."

Hearing her voice nearly break into a sob, Lynx-O could not say no. If he was correct, this whole incident will have been erased fot lack of a better word, anyway. "Yes. Of course we can. Let's make the most of the time we have." He smiled at her, and he, Pumyra, and Snarfer turned towards the town.

***

"AAUUGH!" There came a cry of pain from Tygra as a powerful blast of red electricity coursed from Mumm-Ra's fingers into his body. He sprawled in the corner, out cold.

The twins had come onto the scene just in time to se that, and the both of them narrowed their eyes in a nearly identical expression of anger. "Why don't you pick on soemone your own size, Mumm-Ra!" Wilykit demanded. She had her lariat out, an explosives capsule at the ready. Wilykat beside her had done the same.

"Yeah! Why not attack an unarmed newborn cub while you're at it! You seem to like to bully people!"

Mumm-Ra sneered at the young ThunderCat. "Such childish insults, Thunderbrat! You seem to be the ones ganging up on me."

"Yeah, after you sent Bengali and the others somewhere into another dimension!" Wilykit counterd. "That was a cowardly attack if I ever saw one! And you know you have natrual powers none of us have. So deal with it!" With that, the young cat leapt, hurling her pellet, her brother a split second behind her. Their timing in a fight was impeccable.

Both capsules hit their mark, and Mumm-Ra made an angered sound of pain, lashing back out with his weapon of fire, his hands looking now more like flamethrowers.

Wilykat yelped sharply, his side having been seared by the blasts.

Wilykit escaped injury as she flipped backwards, executing a gymnastic feat she'd been trying to perfect and only now managed. "All right!" she excmalined with pleased surprise.

"That's enough!!" Lion-O's voice, commanding as that of an army commander, stopped the action. Even Mumm-Ra paused before turning his disdainful face to him.

"Ready to surrender, ThunderCat?" he asked in a voice of contemptuous etiquette.

"Hardly!" Panthro answered him before Lion-O could. He was facing the mummy, a snarl on his face.

"But we are gonna finish this one way or another!" Lion-O added, and pointed the mighty Sword of Omens at the undead priest. "Hooo! Hoooo! Hooooo!!!" At each cry, the Sword of Omens blasted its power of good at the mummy priest, who shrieked in mingled pain and fury, trying desperately to counteract the energy with his own. The two beams, his brilliant red, the lion's a bright blue, clashed for one moment, before Lion-O's finally overcame the other. There was a large flash of light that sent everyone still standing tumbling across the dusty floor of the chamber, and then silence for one moment.

After long enough of a time to make Lion-O think the mummy had been struck unconscious like Tygra, Mumm-Ra groaned and stood. "You will pay for that, cub," he growled in a low, nearly inaudible voice. "Ancient Spirits of Evil! Your humble servant Mumm-Ra asks you to give me the power to overcome my enemies!"

"Stop him, Lion-O!" Wilykat cried, getting up himself and jumping forward to do he didn't know what.

"Too late!" Panthro cried. Mumm-Ra was glowing blue as the energy coursed through his body. Now seemingly ten feet taller, although his stature had remained the same, he turned around once more. "And now you die, ThunderCats..."

***

"FIRE!" Cheetara screamed, the temptation to yell that too great as she punched the button. There was the unpleasant shriek of an alarm, and a computer voice saying something in Plundaarian that Cheetara hoped meant the miserable thing had launched. It shouldn't be more than a few minutes. "Well," she said, turning her strained face toward Snarf. "It's done...now all we can do is wait..." She turned her head sharply as the banging grew louder, and there was a shriek of bending metal as the chair began to buckle under the constant onslaught...

***

Lynx-O, Pumyra, and Snarfer were walking through a park, where Pumyra was simply looking; watching the cubs playing, seeing the colors of the tres, the brilliant summer greens and the less common deep reds and oranges of some of the foliage. Suddenly, Lynx-O stopped and boweed his head, deep chills going through his mind and body. "I feel it is happening," he said quietly. "Whatever will happen, it will happen soon." While Snarfer looked around, keeping respectfully silent, Pumyra took her own last look around, knowing what she was doing was saying good-bye. She clutched Lynx-O and Snarfer's hands and waited.

***

KABLOOOOM! Far, far away from Plundaar, the super-explosive that the avian had been working on in his lab exploded, sending shock waves hundreds of miles in just seconds. Of course they heard nothing on Plundaar, but Cheetara knew when it happened, because a red light flashed on the console, and a grim sounding Plundaarian voice announced something different than what she had assumed was a countdown. Then there was nothing. The weapon that likely would have wiped out New Thundera had exploded harmlessly in space on an icy, unlivable planet.

"Aha! Now you're in trouble, wretch!" This announcement followed the shriek of metal scraping against the stone floor as the chair was finally bent in half and cast away. Three Mutants barrelled in, no more being able to fit. Cheetara was sure there weer more outside though.

"Snnaaaarff!" Snarf cried, and jumped into Cheetara's arms. The ThunderCat began to back into the corner, ready to fight like she'd never fought before, but a strange thing began to happen. She felt dizzy, and could see that Snarf and the Mutants felt the disorientation too. "It's happening!" she screamed, her voice sounding slow and distant.

***

In the Black Pyramid, Lion-O suddenly stopped fighting. Tygra had awakened and joined the brawl once more, and Panthro was fighting with all his might against the strengthened demon. Mumm-Ra might be working on borrowed power, aand would likely spend a long time recovering, but that did them little good at the moment. They were losing!

But Lion-O suddenly was no longer concerned with that. He'd had a flash of intuition so strong it almost sent him reeling. "Sword of Omens!" he cried, as the other ThunderCats kept Mumm-Ra off of him. "Give me Sight Beyond Sight!" He'd heard a voice, one that sounded like a combination of Jaga and his own father, and many others. It was the voices of all who had ever carried the mighty Sword of Omens, telling him that he must look.

What he saw made his eyes widen. As Cheetara, Snarf, Bengali, Lynx-O, Pumyra, and Snarfer began to be affaected by the explosions occurring on two diffeerent alignments of the stars in two different times, they were flung into a realm where time had no effect on them. They may as well have been in Lion-O's own time, thus enabling the Sword of Omens to see them, and give Lion-O an insight: they could not return on their own. They had succeeded, in altering the time line, and the spell Mumm-Ra had used had been broken through, but they needed an anchor, something that their bodies would respond to so that they would end up in the right place and the correct time...

The young lord stepped back ferom the fight, the din of it seeming to be muted as he held his weapon out in front of him. This is how it always happened: a sheen of calm and serenity flowed through his mind as he began the words that he had heard all his life: "Thunder...thunder..."

"Panthro be careful!"

"Wilykit, look out!"

Lion-O heard none of this; the fight had become a mere buzzing of sound to him. "...thunder....ThunderCats, HOOOOO!"

The fight was finally disrupted when a flash of impossibly bright red emanated from the mighty blade to burst through the roof of the Black Pyramid and soar into the sky. A feral roar, disembodied in the chamber, resounded through the pyramid as the Cat's Symbol was cast into the sky.

Six ThunderCats felt dizziness and disorientation as they felt a vast, irresistable pull that they could not explain, and their bodies literally faded out of their current exsistances to answer it.

Part 20

Part 22

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