Chapter 2: The Coming Storm
Repeatedly slamming her forehead against the surface of her desk was starting to sound more and more appealing the more she thought about her encounter with Prince Lion-O.
Although… none of it was actually her fault, he was the one who ran into her, and he was the one who started something with her in the slums.
Leppria sighed, running her claws through her hair. Maybe it was best to just forget about it; it wasn't like she'd ever see the prince again, or like Jorma would never get his hands on another explosive for her again. Besides, she got some really good wires that were being put to good use.
Using tweezers, she connected the copper wires to the shard of Thundrilium that acted as the device's battery, flinching when sparks of electricity shot out and burned her finger.
"You can keep tinkering with that garbage forever, it is never going to work!" Cougra slurred as he passed by her room. She frowned at him as he struggled to fasten the buttons of his shirt over his bulging stomach, the silk fabric making strained noises as it tried to fit the fat cat.
She rolled her eyes and picked her tweezers back up, "What are you getting so dressed up for?"
The old cougar purred as he opened the door, "General Grune has returned from his quest, and the king is declaring a festival to honor the fallen General Panthro!" he explained, Leppria already knowing why he was going. "Feasts and wine as far as the eye can see tonight, I encourage you to take your fill before it's all gone!"
As exhausting as he could be, Leppria tried to give Cougra the benefit of the doubt at times, he did have his moments as few as they were. He took her in as his apprentice after her parents died so he wasn't all bad, just an old drunk really.
Parties weren't her style though, so she had to decline his invitation. "Thanks but I think I'll stay here, someone has to finish up those orders we got the other day."
While finishing a sword and a battle axe were perfect excuses, she had every intention on working on her tech for the rest of the night.
Cougra shrugged, "Suit yourself, but don't go wasting anymore time on that junk!" another spark jumped out at her hand, as if to emphasize his point. She mewed slightly and stuck her finger in her mouth, swiping her tongue across the tiny burn to relieve the pain.
He left for the feast and Leppria was left to her own devices, lighting a candle for both light and a makeshift welder for parts that needed to be connected. While she would have loved a blowtorch for such a task, she'd never found one that wasn't in pieces, so she was forced to make do with a much harder alternative.
However, while the process was slower than watching grass grow, one final adjustment of wires caused a surge of electricity to flood through the contraption like blood through veins. The telltale whirs and clicks of a functional piece of tech had her heart leaping in her chest.
She closed the metal panel over the array of wires and turned the dial to the left, hearing it pulse and hum as it adapted to its primary function of scanning and sorting through sounds. At least that's what she thought it was used for, judging by the dials and speakers attached to it.
Putting on the listening headset, she turned the left dial to adjust the volume of the sounds, and turned the right one to change what frequency she could listen to, hearing the thrums of music from the festival and even the vibrations on the ground from dancing cats.
"Yes! It works!" she cheered, pumping her fists and kicking her feet giddily.
Not wasting another moment in her room, Leppria placed the device in her bag and made the climb to the roof of the forge, one of the highest points of the palace, the muscles in her legs burning happily. The leopard clan was known to have the best climbers for a reason, their strong legs and flexible bodies perfect for making their way to the highest peaks of Third Earth.
She gave a polite wave to the azure sphinx head that marked Cat's Lair before sitting squarely on top of it, positioning her audio-scanner in front of her and adjusting the dials again.
It truly made her want to squeal with glee, she could hear across the furthest point of Thundera, from the steady steps of General Lynx-O at the top of the outer wall, to the chirps of sand crawlers in the far desert. Who was laughing now Cougra?! Ha!
Leppria sat for hours listening, mostly to the festival and all the happy sounds that came from it. Cheers and laughter, music and the clinking of chalices filled with wine. While she would have felt a twinge of sadness for not being a part of it any other day, she was far to content to sit and listen to her hard work being validated, for once.
A new sound suddenly flooded her ears, and she winced as the shrill ringing punctured her eardrums. She quickly turned down the volume as she focused on the sound, hearing static and buzzing behind the high ringing. Leppria cocked her head confused, she'd never heard a sound like this before. It was similar to the sound of gravel finding its way into the sharpening wheel in the forge, an angry type of grinding that was not meant to be there.
It was like… interference? Like another signal was clashing with hers, but that made no sense…
The young leopard groaned, blaming it on her own weak frequency. She'd have to take it apart again and give it an update, but she almost purred at the thought of making her sweet baby work even better.
She went to bed hours later, thoughts swimming with ways to update her audio scanner, the festival she'd missed completely forgotten.
According to Cougra, along with everyone else in the palace, Prince Lion-O had pardoned two lizards at the festival and caused a big commotion. Leppria briefly wondered, as she sharpened the blade of a sword, if she would have done the same if faced with similar circumstances.
No.
Sparks rained down onto the floor as she finished bringing the blade to a deadly shine. She would not do as the prince had done. It was one thing to see lizards in chains through the eyes of a prince who had never known sorrow, and see a species down on their luck. It was another thing entirely to see them through the eyes of cats like her who had lost friends and cherished loved ones in the Lizard War.
Fallen soldiers, mothers and fathers that never came home.
The lizards could rot in the gallows for all she cared.
A loud electric whine startled her out of her thoughts. Leppria turned to find her audio scanner sitting on her worktable, its newfound frequency signal full of screaming static as it struggled to pinpoint each one.
"What the…?"
She practically leapt across the room, grabbing the frequency dial and turning it over to try and quiet its mechanical cries, but whatever signal it had latched onto was too strong. It was eating up every nearby frequency.
Leppria gulped, sweat seeping through the fur on her forehead.
For every channel to be jammed in such a way, something had to have an extremely powerful source of energy.
Something big.
Suddenly, the bellowing thunder of the massive horn on General Lynx-O's wall echoed throughout the city. When it wasn't followed by an identical second blare her stomach dropped like a stone.
Thundera was being attacked.
Leppria grabbed her bag and quickly swept every single thing on her worktable into it, scraps and tools all jumbled together with a metal clatter as Cougra was already leaving for the upper shelters in the center of the city.
"Hurry up girl! I won't let you haunt me just because you couldn't move those feet of yours fast enough!" he growled, holding open the door for her while she was still packing every piece of tech she owned into her knapsack.
Slipping a pair of welding goggles around her neck and beginning to carefully place her audio scanner in her bag, Leppria waved Cougra out. "I'll meet you at the shelter, I promise! There's just something I need to get."
The old cougar scoffed at her before leaving, the palace rumbling as boulders from catapults struck the outer wall. She crouched down to pull up a loose floorboard, finding her father's toolbelt and her mother's silver bracelets both wrapped neatly in blue fabric.
She hooked the belt around her waist and slipped the bangles around her wrists, knowing she couldn't leave either precious item behind, especially during an attack that required the evacuation of Cat's Lair, the most heavily guarded part of the city.
Ready to take cover beneath Thundera, Leppria left the royal forge, making her way through the city alongside noble cats on their way to the same place she was and royal guards on their way to hold the wall.
Out in the open, she could see towers of smoke rising from the outer wall and beyond it. That meant whoever was attacking hadn't made it into the city yet, they wouldn't be safe until the enemy was driven away, but at least they had time to get to safety.
Leppria made it to the entrance of the shelter when something familiar caught her eye.
It was barely a dot on the side of the entrance, and if it wasn't for the small blinking light attached to it she probably would have never seen it.
Circular, with a familiar timer panel in the center, only this time it blinked as it counted down.
A spike of horror stabbed her in the gut, and she almost swallowed her tongue as her hand shot up to swipe a claw across the time panel, deactivating the explosive before it detonated. She managed to pry it off the wall and stash it in her bag, but bombs didn't just appear out of nowhere.
Someone had put it there, and wanted to cause a terrifying amount of damage.
If there was one, there had to be more.
Leppria ran from the shelter entrance, her heart thundering in her chest as she spotted more bombs positioned above the doors and at the top of each towering column, the timer ticking down to the final light on each one.
By Panthera… there were dozens of them.
"Wait!" she screamed, throwing her hand out. "Stop!"
A flash of light was all she saw before everything around her exploded. Her back hit the ground, black and white spots clouding her vision and a harsh ringing filling her ears and blocking out everything else. She was too late, and she choked on ash as she saw the flaming ruins of the shelter full of innocent cats.
The smell of burning flesh filled her nose and made her mouth fill with bile, and she knew they were all gone.
She couldn't tell if her tears were from grief or from the burn of smoke in her eyes, but she did not have time to be comforted by her tears, because two sets of icy clawed hands grabbed her and hauled her from the ground.
"Got another one here, if it can walk it goes to the mines!" one of the lizards hissed. Leppria panicked, struggling and trying to pull her arms free, but the reptile refused to let her go, slapping her across the face with his long whip-like tail to silence her.
It didn't work as it only made her struggle more, kicking and scratching as the lizards tried to drag her off, one of them pulling out an iron collar that she refused to let them clamp around her neck.
Hissing, Leppria kicked her legs out and knocked both the collar and the lizard's rifle out of his claws. "Get off me!"
The lizard roared angrily in her face, using his tail to strike her again, the rough scales cutting her skin as she fell in a heap on the ground. When he tried to grab her again she swallowed her fear and bit his hand, his blood flooding her mouth as he screamed and struggled but even then she did not let go.
She only released her fangs after the lizard planted his foot on her face and ripped his limb free, kicking her aside. Eyes like emeralds widened as they fixated on the rifle lying mere feet away, temporarily forgotten by her attackers.
Before they realized she was free of their grasp, Leppria dived for the weapon, rolling to her feet with the rifle in hand pointed at the lizards.
Her face ached as it swelled with a bruise and the iron of the lizard's blood was foul on her tongue, but she didn't care. Aiming at them both with her claw trembling over the trigger, she grappled in her mind over shooting them and running. But where would she run? Chaos lay in every direction she looked, the streets of Thundera overrun with bodies and rubble.
"Go on." One of the lizards growled, both of his arms, including the one she bit, raised in surrender. "Kill us… it's what you cats are good at."
She bit her tongue until the taste of her own blood mixed with his and glared at the pair of reptiles, hatred and anger igniting in her.
It wasn't enough that the cold-blooded creatures had taken her parents… now they'd leveled her home and killed hundreds too.
Leppria did not have to think about it, her finger squeezing the trigger to kill them both, but before a single shot could be released from the rifle another lizard had risen up behind her and smashed the blunt end of his own weapon into the back of her head.
Her vision went black before she even hit the ground.
I've read a few thundercats oc fics that had the oc feeling sympathy for the lizards like Lion-O does, but I didn't want to do that, while Lion-O had the right idea in promoting peace I feel that he also lacked context for the cats hating the lizards in the first place. There was a war in his father's lifetime that decimated both sides, and since Lion-O is the prince he wouldn't understand the devastation caused on the homefront due to the war. People lost loved ones and friends, people died because of the lizards, and I wanted my oc to reflect that a little bit. if it was unclear, Leppria's parents were killed in the Lizard War, assumedly by lizards, so that's why she doesn't like them. I think this will cause good conflict between the two characters going forward, Lion-O is in the right to show mercy but Leppria is also in the right to be distrusting. Anyway, see you next time! Ciao!