22

"What happened?" Lynx-O asked. His sightless face was scrunched in a concerned frown.

From where he was running a routine scan at the computer console of the Tower of Omens, Snarfer turned around and shrugged. "I don't know, Lynx-O, nope, suuure don't. What makes you think something happened?"

"I-I don't know, Snarfer. I have a feeling that something extraordinary has just happened." The elderly ThunderCat shook his head in bafflement. "It's the strangest feeling."

Snarfer shrugged. "Well nothing's on the scanners. Want me to contact Cats' Lair?"

Lynx-O shook his head once more. "No. That's all right, Snarfer. It is likely only my imagination."

"Right. Well weren't we goiong to replace the pipes in the lower level today?"

Snapping out of his reverie, Lynx-O said "Yes. Let's get that done." He followed the young Snarf's footfalls and paused to say, "Though for some reason, plastic pipes don't seem like such a good idea..."

***

"Snarf, will you stop pacing?" Cheetara said with a laugh. "You're going to drive me up a wall!

"I can't help it. There's something wrong!" Snarf rose on his tail and crossed his arms in a gesture of helpless frustration. "And I don't know what!"

"Snarf, you've checked the scanners a dozen times at least and checked on Lion-O enough for him to be ready to boot you out of Cats' Lair." Cheetara laughed and lay a hand on his shoulder. "Easy, Snarf. You're just uptight today. Why don't you go outside and get some fresh air? It's a warm, beautiful day."

"Well I guess...maybe I'll go to the Berbil Village and get some candifruit."

"That's the spirit." Cheetara laughed and shook her head. But...now that Snarf mentioned it...there did seem to be something wrong. The cheetah frowned and tried to put her finger on it, but it eluded her for now.

***

In the Bolkin Village, Wilykit and Wilykat were playing with some of the youths that lived there. They were playing a game of hide-and-seek.

"Gotcha!" Wilykat declared, but then his facial expression turned to one of puzzlement as he looked, and who he thought was there wasn't. "Hey, what's the big idea?"

There came a laugh from home base. Wilykit was there along with the three kids they were playing with. All were grinning at them. "I was never there, Wilykat, it was only a practice dummy the warriors use for spear target practice. Don't let-"

"-your eyes fool you," Wilykit and Wilykat said along with the Bolkin youth. The three Bolkins looked at the twins strangely, as Wilykit and Wilykat themselves exchanged puzzled glances.

"Um...how did you know what I was gonna say?" the Bolkin boy asked.

"I-I don't know," Wilykit said.

"We both just had a really strong bout of deja-vu..."

"What's deja-vu?" the littlest Bolkin asked.

"It's when you think something's happened before," an older one said.

"Boy that's really weird."

"Yeah," Wilykat said. "I think me and Kit are gonna go home now. Maybe we're coing down with something." He didn't want to admit it, but that had spooked him a geart deal. He'd had the feeling before, but never so strong that he knew something before it was said.

"Okay, bye, twins..." The three Bolkins watched leave, a strange expression on their faces. It had spooked them as well.

The ThunderCats slept uneasily that night, but no one knew why.

***

The next day, Lynx-O's feeling of malaise had only deepened, and he asked Bengali if he would not mind going out in the ThuderStike and taking a look around. The pods were already separated, he could take the middle section out alone. He agreed readily enough.

Twenty minutes later, Lynx-O's startled ears picked up what sounded for all the world like a crash outside the Tower of Omens. After confirming on the Braille board that Bengali had indeed crashed the ThunderStrike, he ran out to see if he was okay.

"Rowl, I'm all right, Lynx-O," the young ThunderCat said in answer to the lynx's query, climbing out of the vehicle. "I-I don't know what happened...I was taking off when I got this feeling of-of terror! As if I were afraid of heights."

Lynx-O frowned. "Are you afraid of heights?"

"No! I mean...at least I never have been! But this time I just couldn't do it. The sight of all that blue up there and the clouds just sent me into a shaking fit...and I lost control of the ThunderStrike." He looked and felt terribly unnerved.

Lynx-O frowned and tilted his head down, thinking hard. Something was going on, and it wasn't just his imagination.

"It's all right though, I mean it was just a hard landing. I can get her back into the hangar."

"It's all right, Bengali, it could have happened to anyone. Why don't you take the Hovercat and keep it close to the ground?"

"Rowl, good idea." Bengali left, and Lynx-O thought, and thought.

***

"Mumm-Ra?" Lion-O asked. "Hmm. You could be right, Lynx-O. He has been awfully quiet the last few days. I wouldn't be surprised if he was up to something."

"Maybe we should go to the Black Pyramid and check it out?" Wilykit asked.

"No, Wilykit," Lion-O said. "We don't know for sure. It could be nothing more than a few weird psychic flashes. If need be, Cheetara can go into a trance and find out. But only if there's reason to think it's necessary. We don't want to cause trouble if it's nothing."

"You're right, Lion-O. Still its weird...Wilykat and I had a weird incident too." The young feline told her lord about the incident at the Bolkin village, leaving nothing out.

Lion-O furrowed his brow. "Strange. We will have to keep an eye out."

Another sleepless night passed for the ThunderCats. The feeling of impending doom refued to leave them.

***

"LYYYYNX-OOOO!" came the screeching, harried, I-am-a-second-away-from- panicking voice from the lower level of the Tower. A little startled, Lynx-O turned away from his Braille board at the sound of four small feet running up the stairs. "Lynx-O!" Snarfer wailed. "The pipes broke down there, and the lower level's flooded!"

Lynx-O let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding. He turned his sightless eyes to where he normally would have been making eye contact with the young Snarf. He had been without his eyes for a long time now, but had gone many, many more years with it, and was still in the habit of making eye contact, even if he could no longer do so. "Easy, Snarfer, it can be fixed," he said to his young friend. "You can't overreact so much over little things, Snarfer, you had me worried. I thoguht we were under attack, or that you had gotten seriously hurt."

Snarfer's ears folded down. "Sorry, Lynx-O..." he said in a quieter tone. "But there's a foot of water down there! I mean all the plumbing just...busted!"

"All right, did you turn off the water?"

"Well yeah..."

"Then let's go down and fix it." Lynx-O smiled and started for the stairs. Lynx-O knew the Tower of Omens better than any building he had ever been in. He knew every turn, every distance, every doorway, every piece of furniture, all by estimation and touch, as well as hearing and smell. It was somehting he had learned to do since he lost his sight. He had had to in order to survive, and not be hopelessly dependent upon the others.

Once down there, Lynx-O sighed. "All the plastic pipes," he said, feeling the damage. "I thought they were a bad idea. Snarfer, don't we have a bunch of metal pipes in the supply closet down here?" Suddenly, Lynx-O stopped short. "I did think these pipes a bad idea! Snarfer, remember a couple of days ago, when we changed all the pipes, I said that using plastic pipes was a bad idea!"

Snaerfer blinked. "You're right, yessir, yep! I remember you said that...but how did you know?"

"I don't know...something's very wrong here. Let's go get the pipes from Cats' Lair. I must talk with Lion-O."

"I was gonna ask how you knew they had the right ones there, but I know they do too." Snarfer looked scared. "What's going on, Lynx-O?"

The lynx shook his head. "I don't know." As he walked from the control room, he unconsciously veered around a certain spot on the floor, although there was nothing there. Yet.

***

"That's it, Ma-Mutt!" Ma-Mutt barked and jumped up onto his master's leg. Mumm-Ra bent to pet him. "I will not destroy them, my horrid hound. I will simply create a rift in space and time, it would be a simple enough spell, and one that is least likely to backfire on me. And if it is random, if not even I can control where they end up, then how could they return? And I will cast them in...or better yet, set it up so that they do it themselves!" And Mumm-Ra began to search for a spell...

***

Lion-O sighed. Once again, all of the ThunderCats were gathered in the control room of Cats' Lair, talking about the strangeness that had started as a vague feeling and escalated to a shrieking fear. "Cheetara...I'm afraid you'll have to go into a trance. We can't ignore this any longer. If something's up we must know about it. I have an awful feeling that our very lives depend on it." He looked around at the assembled group, the silent Pumyra, the nervous Snarf and the troubled Bengali. They had been talking for hours and nothing resolved...so they thought. Though they didn't know it, by holding this palaver and getting the ThunderCats of the Tower of Omens out of there, they had changed recent histroy. Pumyra, Snarfer, and Lynx-O had been in Thundera by this time the first time around.

Cheetara sighed and stood. "All right, Lion-O. I will try." Cheetara closed her eyes.

***

Just then, a call came over the radio. The droning, double voice that belonged to the Berbils crackled through it on a frequency that sounded like it might break down at any second. "ThunderCats! This is Roberbill! The Mutants are here, and we are powerless to stop them, oh please heeelp!"

"No!" Lynx-O cried. "This is a trap!" He knew this with sudden blazing certainty.

"What?" Panthro said. "Lynx-O, we can't just leave the Berbils to fend for themselves!"

"No, of course not," Lynx-O said with some urgency. "But still there's something about this call... Cheetara! Go ahead with your vision, let Tygra and myself answer this call."

Lion-O thought only a moment before nodding. "All right, old friend. But be careful."

"I will." Leaving Cheetara to her visions, Tygra and Lynx-O ran for the hangar.

Once in the hangar, Tygra ran for the Feliner, but stopped short at Lynx- O's sudden warning cry: "Tygra stop!!"

The tiger froze, his eyes widnening at the sudden feleing of doom in his mind. "What's wrong, Lynx-O?"

"Take one, maybe two steps..." The old lynx's voice was tense. Feeling the puzlement from Tygra, Lynx-O nonetheless knew when he complied with his request. There was a sharp outcry of startlement, then disgust. "Tygra?"

As from a great distance, Tygra's voice came: "Lynx-O! A portal! Portals!! Lynx-O, I'm looking into another world!" At that moment, both Tygra and Lynx-O remembered. They didn't know exactly what happened, but they did know enough. Tygra backed out, then stepped forward again. "Gone...Lynx- O, we must tell Lion-O."

Lynx-O shook his head. "The Berbils need our help, Tygra. But Cheetara will find out through her visions. Let's go quickly! But be careful. I think there might be more of these."

***

Lynx-O was right, and it was the Mutants that made it known to the ThunderCats what was going on in the Berbil Village. While in the first version of this history, Cheetara and Snarf had ridden to the rescue quickly, this time there was a delay as Lynx-O and Tygra discovered the portal. This changed things a bit, changed the Mutants' positions and timing.

Tygra saw it. He saw the Mutants attempt the manuever that had caused Cheetara and Snarf to be hurled onto a possible Plundaar of the future, but this time the move wasn't so coordinated. Jackalman nicked Monkian's Skycutter and sent him off course. Monkian's front end lurched into the portal, and he pulled up in time to save himself from being thrown through. Tygra shouted a warning, and he and Lynx-O pulled up as well.

Cautiously, Tygra tested the air with the Feliner's sensors and found a fading portal. He grinned savagely. "Lynx-O! I rmeember now! I rememeber everyting. We can find the portals!"

S-S-Slithe, who had not crashed this time around, growled. "Back to Castle Plundaar!" Mumm-Ra would not be happy!

***

Tygra and Lynx-O returned to Cats' Lair to find that Cheetara had gone through her vision. They also remembered everything now; everything. Tygra told Lion-O of the sensory input of the Feliner, and they came up with the solution it had taken them much longer to realize last time. They would find and close all the portals that Mumm-Ra had cast, and then they would seek him out.

Lynx-O touched Pumyra on the shoulder and knew that she too remembered what happened. He found himself remembering the incident at the Chasm and withdrew his hand. She needed to be alone.

Things happened quickly from there. The portals were easily enough found and closed, while Mumm-Ra fumed and raged in his pyramid, his cauldron having told him just how they knew. What irked him most of all was knowing that he had succeeded, only to be defeated even in his success. The ThunderCats did indeed pay him a visit, and discovered that the spell could not be cast again. After finding that the book of spells could not be destroyed, they had left Mumm-Ra fuming in anger, retreating to his sarcophagus to attack another day.

Pumyra had not gone with the others, but had returned to the Tower of Omens to think. Once it was all over, and the others had returned, Pumyra left the Tower of Omens to go to the plains and watch the sunset. She could tell that it would be one of those that she had always loved on Third Earth; the kind where the normally yellow sun was deep red, turning the sky brilliant hues of orange. It was then she could imagine she was on Thundera once more, and she could remember the second chance she'd had there. But now as she watched the summer sun sink below the horizon, she knew Lynx-O had been right.

She was not glad that her countrymen had died; she was not glad that she had had to stand by and let it happen, but she was glad she was there on Third Earth. Pumyra realized how much she would miss the little green and blue planet and its denizens; the Berbils, Warrior Maidens the Wollows and all the other allies they had made here. She knew things were as they should be. Leaving the sun to its endless circle, Pumyra stood and walked for home.

Part 21

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