Chapter 7: The Briar
Embers popped and cracked from the fire, casting warped shadows across their makeshift camp as Leppria put all her focus into each turn of the screwdriver clutched confidently in her hand. She vaguely heard the wild giggles and squeals of the twins goofing off nearby, but she only gave them the twitch of her ear as she worked, adjusting the shoulder-rest of her newly acquired plasma cannon.
She had been absorbed in the device ever since the deserts of the Sand Sea turned to lush grass and towering forests, her eyes trained intensely on each cable she moved or bolt she screwed, the weapon almost complete if she could just get it to sit comfortably on her shoulder when she used it.
It was bulky for a scrawny cat like her, but her small nerd-arms were stronger than they looked, made firm with muscle from her years in the royal forge.
Leppria hummed while she worked, having heard Kit play the tune on her flupe countless times while the group walked. She hardly noticed anything else around her, not even Tygra giving her a skeptical side-eye from across the fire until he actually spoke to her.
"So, you actually know how this stuff works?" he asked, striped arms crossed across his chest as he gestured with his chin to the cannon in her lap.
She looked up, sliding her welding goggles back over her hair and nodding. "Yep!" she mewed, eyes bright with enthusiasm. "I've always had a knack for technology, I've studied it ever since I was a cub."
Thinking back to the hours she would spend combing through Jorma's junk-piles and picking out what caught her attention, eyes sparkling with joy and affection every time she found something. The time she managed to squeeze after she finished sharpening swords and fixing weapons to be bent over her desk with her goggles tugged snug over her eyes as she brought each piece of tech back to life.
"You and Lion-O both…" he grumbled under his breath. "I don't get it, it all looks like scrap to me."
The leopard paused her fingers, her claws momentarily frozen over an open panel. She smiled sadly at the wire she kneaded between her fingers, "I guess I've always been better with machines than with people…"
As depressing as it was, it was true; Leppria was always happier to shut herself in her room and rebuild tech forever, shunning things girls her age normally did like spending time with friends and talking about who was cute and who wasn't. She wasn't ever unhappy with having no friends, but now that Thundera was razed to the ground and no other she-cats or members of the leopard clan remained for her to do such activities with, she couldn't help but feel that she had missed out on something.
Prince Tygra had gone back to ignoring her, and her thoughts were interrupted by the curious mews of Snarf sniffing around her knapsack and the bombs spilling out of it.
He maneuvered his paws around most of them but tilted his head at his reflection in the glass activation gage. "Nyah?"
Leppria bristled, "Careful there, little guy!" she said, picking him up and smiling at the surprised noise he made. She held him above the ground, giggling as he tried to wriggle away. "Wouldn't want one of those going off."
She tried to set him down but his wiggling was getting hard to hold onto. "Snyarf!" Leppria yelped when his tail accidently whipped across her face, forcing her to drop the fat snarf into her lap on top of the plasma cannon.
Snarf scrambled, his back paw catching on the trigger and causing the weapon to fire a bolt of blue energy into a nearby tree, a clean hole blown right through and leaving a smoking outline as the resounding blast echoed through the forest.
The pet had somehow found himself on top of her head, clinging and digging his claws into the straps of her goggles and locks of her mane as the two of them stared dumbfounded at the damage they'd caused.
No one spoke or dared to move for a long moment, Lion-O sending her an icy glare before stomping over from where he sat with Cheetara.
He looked down at Leppria with his hands planted firmly on his hips, stern and foreboding like Cougra was whenever one of her machines blew up in her room.
A trill fell from her lips as she nervously pointed the blame onto Snarf.
"What was that?" he growled. "You could have just given away our position!"
"Uh…" she found herself frozen under his scolding, but she was quickly saved as Snarf jumped from her head onto his master's shoulders, pawing at his scarlet mane and irritating the king even more.
"Narf!" he yipped. "Narf! Narf!"
"Ugh… what is it now Snarf?" Lion-O grabbed him, holding his squirming body away from his face. The pet's long tail was thrashing wildly as the lion set him down, his nose high in the air as it wriggled with agitation.
Leppria cocked her head, lifting her own nose and taking a sniff of the air.
The forest took up most of her senses, the campfire even more so, but past it all was the distinct and icy stench of metal.
A brief look of knowing passed between her and Lion-O. He called the other cats to their feet and the group climbed up, using the towering trees and interlocking branches as a pathway through the forest. Despite her lacking athletic ability, Leppria was a born climber, and found it easy to keep up.
They stopped at the edge of a clearing, staying low and close together as each of their nocturnal eyes widened at the sight before them.
Lights flooded the forest as Lizards swarmed, each slimy bastard equipped with enough weapons to wipe them all out without breaking a sweat. Their guns and whips paled in comparison however to their colossal mech suits.
On any other day, and in any other situation, Leppria would be bushy-tailed at the sight of the technological advancements before her, but seeing them in the claws of Lizards only made her haunches rise with rage and a growl build in her throat.
"It's the entire Lizard army…" Cheetara muttered, the leopard hearing anger in her voice as well. A quick glance to the side revealed a general consensus, the golden woman's eyes narrowed and Prince Tygra's hackles raised, even the kittens' tails had puffed with fury as the group waited for the chance to avenge Thundera. "Just say the word Lion-O."
Leppria cocked her cannon, the device whirring excitedly as she itched to pull the trigger and unleash plasma into a Lizard's chest.
"No." he said, his words like a punch in the gut. "If we stay here… we die."
The growl that sprung from Tygra's chest was a perfect reflection of what was happening inside her head as she heard those words, frustrated and angry. While Kit and Kat didn't hide their relief at the prospect of avoiding a fight, the prince and the blacksmith did not share the same sentiment.
Cheetara also seemed to disagree, her fingers twitching towards her staff, but she was silent as she begrudgingly but loyally followed her king as he turned back towards the darkness of the forest.
Leppria however remained rooted beside Tygra, hands clenched tight over the cloth she'd tied around the handle of her cannon to act as a pommel, unwilling to let go and turn away from the opportunity to avenge what was taken from her and the other Thundercats.
"Thundercats don't retreat!" he said, standing tall against his brother.
Lion-O faced him, eyes hardened like ice. "For a situation this hopeless I'll make an exception."
He left no room for argument, Leppria bit her tongue to stop herself from yelling. She usually prided herself on logic, using her brain rather than her claws, but those Lizards down in the clearing hadn't hesitated to use their claws to slaughter hundreds. Why should she spare them the same fate?
"Hope comes from action!" Tygra spoke, the scrawny leopard planted firmly beside him in agreement. "Isn't that what father taught us?"
"And what happened to him?" his words were every bit as cold as his gaze, and when he turned away a second time he did not look back at his brother. "Now come on!"
As frustrating as his retreating back was, Leppria couldn't deny his point. She knew that survival of the group was what stood above everything else, and charging into a battle that obviously showed the Lizards' favor would not let them survive, but damnit if it wasn't hard to latch her cannon back onto her back and follow.
She gave Tygra an apologetic glance before leaping onto the next branch, his eyes blazing with anger and oh so different from his brother's icy stare.
The group stayed high above the ground, jumping between branches and managing to stay out of sight in the cover of darkness, though the light of Panthera made sneaking difficult.
They only stopped once they came to a towering briar, vines and brambles twisted and bound together so tight that no light could possibly break through. The undergrowth was far too thick to navigate from above, but Lion-O apparently decided it was perfect.
"They won't be able to follow us in there." He said, Leppria scoffing audibly beside Cheetara.
"So the plan is to… what? Hide and hope the Lizards don't find us?" for the first time she didn't flinch under his glare, because she was just as frustrated, just as tired.
"You're welcome to stay out here in the open if you want." His hiss put her fur on end, her hands clenching at her sides as a growl built in her throat, but Tygra laid a chilling hand on her shoulder before she could forget her place.
"Running away from every fight we come to is not how we're going to win this war."
The silence that stretched between the two brothers spoke more than shouting possibly could have, until Lion-O fixed his gaze forward, shoulders tense and mind made up. "I'm not asking."
He didn't wait for them, landing on the ground and not bothering to make sure the others were following him, he knew they would.
Leppria bit her tongue until it bled, shaking her head as she followed the young king once again into an illogical situation. Damn it she was a blacksmith, none of this was cut out for her. But she didn't get a say, she only got the choice to follow or die, so she swallowed her leopard's pride and stood with the others before the briar.
"You may be king, but I'm still older than you!" Tygra called before joining them in some attempt to keep face.
The prince entered the briar first, sending his brother one final glare as he passed him, Cheetara and the twins close behind him. Leppria didn't glare or growl, but she did give one final look at the moon shining overhead behind them before she entered through the door of thorns and Lion-O's silhouette eclipsed it.
The further they walked the darker it became until they were guided only by what they could barely make out with their eyes alone. Leppria stuck close to Cheetara, the golden women's sun-kissed fur practically a beacon all its own. The kitten clung almost uncomfortably to her back, Kit and Kat's paws hanging off the back of her tool belt and one of her wrenches clanging occasionally against Kit's many bracelets.
Time passed oddly until a new sound vibrated against her ears, growing until the soft echo of music rang out amongst the vines.
"What is that?" Cheetara said aloud, the rest of the group matching her confusion as they listened to the ringing tune.
The leopard's ears flicked as she looked upwards, searching for the source of the singing and finding herself marveling at its sweetness. "It's… beautiful."
"But where's it coming from?" Tygra seemed to be the wariest, not that he shouldn't be, the music could very well be coming from a predator more vicious than a few Thundercats.
Lion-O suddenly stopped, and after a pause, it didn't take long for the rest of them to figure out why. There was a light just ahead of them, mostly hidden by brambles but shining bright in the dark. The king pointed to it before drawing the Sword of Omens.
"There."
The branches were too thick to slip through, so he raised his sword and cut them down, the light growing brighter with every swing he took to it. Lion-O kept cutting until the brush had fallen away and a path opened up, though strangely the music and soft singing had come to an abrupt stop.
When Leppria stepped into the light alongside the others she didn't know what she was supposed to expect, but what she saw made her eyes widen. She considered herself a relatively open-minded cat, but she had never seen anything like this before.
The source of the singing was a living person, or rather, people, but the thing was, they weren't exactly… people.
They were more like… well… flowers.
They stood on legs made of leaves and each had colorful heads of petal-like hair, their faces green and frightened as they looked upon the cats and held each other close. Leppria blinked as she looked down at them.
They were also kind of… small.
I'll be making some changes, such as Tygra only being a douchy older brother to Lion-O but actually kind of decent to everyone else, and I like the idea of him and Leppria both being unafraid to call him out when he's being an idiot. Tune in next time for an official introduction to the Petalars!