ThunderCats

Bio-Booster Armor Guyver

Eye of the Storm

Episode Eleven

Sho, on first having drawn afternoon watch duty, had found it boring to the point of tedium. Eight hours spent sitting in front of the main monitor of Cat's Lair, eyeing the readouts regarding system performance and fuel supply, and staring out at nothing as image after image appeared on the massive viewscreen.

Since his sparring matches with Cheetara had begun, Sho found the watch to be a welcome repite from having the daylights beaten out of him. Over the course of the past two weeks, he had become well weary of being her punching bag, and had finally begun to fight back. The advice she'd given, along with the bruises and - to be honest - emasculation had finally gotten him over his aversion to fighting a woman.

(Don't look at me as a woman, Sho,) she'd said after knocking him to the mat yet again, (nor as your friend. On this mat, I'm your opponent and nothing else.)

Even so, their matches usually ended in either a win for her or a draw between them. Cheetara's fighting style was much different from Panthro's, which was something of a shock given that the latter had trained the former. Sho was used to power, and Cheetara depended on agility and being unpredictable in general. Though it was still rough going, Sho took some satisfaction that he was no longer the only one leaving the mat with bruises. The experience had given him even more respect for his friend than before.

On top of that, once he had finally started landing solid hits, Myrlha had started her own reward program...

SO! he thought with a mild jump, what's going on in the world today?! Unlike the original Cat's Lair, the new Lair's head possessed no servo-mechanisms for movement, however the Cat's Eye sensor arrays coupled with the long-range sensors of the Mutant warships provided plenty of coverage.

All he saw at present were plains and forests. Sho knew the area of North America they now called their own had been mostly flatlands during the time of Second Earth, and that one could walk for kilometers on end without seeing a single tree. On finding that the planet's axis had tilted nearly eight degrees while he'd been in stasis, it had explained forests where there once had been none. Jungles far north of the equator. Freak weather patterns and storms more ferocious than he could ever recall. The only question was how it had happened in the first place, and he didn't want to contemplate that. Sho, irrational as he knew it to be, was afraid that he might have had a hand in it.

Big surprise, he thought, nothing... What's this? The indicators of the arrays which were aimed at points far beyond the thin clouds were currently lit. With interest piqued, he changed the viewscreen to display the images the deep-space sensors developed from the information they gleaned about goings-on in the immediate solar system.

"A ship?" he asked aloud when the selector graphic closed about the speck and enhanced the image. Sho had never seen the like of it, and could see immediately why threat alarms hadn't gone off. It's once-sleek back-swept design bore innumerable dents and scorch marks. It was clearly not moving under its own power, but the data readouts showed its orbit about Mars to be decaying. More information scrolled up the right side of the display, showing minimal power readings and a single biosign, faint and indeterminable.

"Control Center to Depot," Sho said once he activated the comm system.

"Depot here," Panthro's basso voice replied, "what's up, Sho?"

"Long range sensors're picking up a ship caught in Mars' gravity field. Looks like it's orbit's decaying."

"Distress signal?"

"None. Bare minimum power readings, all focused in the ship's aft and one biosign, but sensors can't tell what it is. I'm patching you in."

"Hmm... Damn!"

"What?" he asked, instantly on alert.

"That's a Thunderian ship!"

"Looks pretty small to have come from Thundera to Third Earth."

"It's an S-Class yacht. Old one, too. My father designed that model. Sho, call Tygra and... who else is on general duty?"

"Umm..." Sho accessed the duty roster on a small monitor of the control panel. "Says here WilyKat and Kyranna."

"Have them meet me in the Depot's launch bay on the double!"

"Will do. I'll monitor you from here."

How did an S-Class yacht make it all the way here? Panthro thought as he began the Feliner's pre-clight checks. It shouldn't have been possible, he knew his father's design like the back of his hand. They were made for short and medium range jaunts into the stars. It had to have been launched from a mothership which had met with some disaster or other. It was the only logical explanation.

"You're sure it's a Thunderian ship?" Kyranna asked from one of the rear seats, WilyKat on her left.

"I'm sure, alright," he replied as the engines cycled up. "Sho told me there's one biosign aboard, but he can't tell for sure what it is."

"It's right where the ship's power's been diverted to," Tygra supplied as they all buckled into their harnesses. "Life support, perhaps?"

"We'll find out when we get there."

Several hours had passed since the Feliner had lifted off from New Thundera Colony. The view of space outside the cockpit had returned to normal once the effects of hyperdrive had worn off, and the ship was poised just within the gravity field of the fourth planet in the Sol System. Mars loomed beneath them, with the yacht ship holding a degrading orbit over the red planet.

Panthro eased the ship closer, every sense attenuated to the controls and data readouts. The yacht was low enough into what remained of the planet's atmosphere to make any kind of recovery somewhat dicey. The bio-readings detected aboard were the only reason the Feliner was out this far. Sentimental or no, none of the ThunderCats could stomach leaving one of their own to die.

"In range," Tygra said, "Engage the tractor beam?"

"Low intensity," Panthro replied on checking the sensor readouts. "That thing's fragile enough as it is. Pull it up, but be gentle."

"Craft is emerging from the atmosphere," WilyKat said from his station. "Distance is three hundred meters."

"Additional stress on the hull is within tolerances," Tygra added. "Surprisingly. How did it get this far?"

"Search me," Panthro replied. "Looks like we're close enough for an umbilical. Kat, you're with me. Let's suit up."

The young Wildcat followed him to the rear of the Feliner as Tygra lined up the targeting reticule with the yacht's airlock. The flexible tube which would grant them safe passage aboard snaked down and a positive lock was attained.

"We're still pretty close to the atmosphere," Tygra said into the commlink, "and well within the gravity well of this planet. Whatever you two need to do down there, don't take too long."

"Affirmative," Panthro's voice replied over the comm. "About how long do we have?"

"I can give you an hour. Maybe two, but that'll be stressing the yacht's hull more than it can stand. Ninety minutes, then clear out."

"Understood."

WilyKat, fully dressed in a pressure suit designed for labor in deep space, followed Panthro along the umbilical tube to the yacht. He kept his eyes forward, blocking out the infinite panorama of space as he followed the elder ThunderCat toward the airlock of the derelict ship.

"Holding up back there?"

"Best I can."

"Listen. Agoraphobia's a real bitch out here. Just face front and follow me. Don't look around 'til we're inside."

"Will do." WilyKat kept his gaze firmly on Panthro's back as they neared the corroded door. Panthro tried the outer panel, which suprisingly worked, and keyed in a code which opened it. Air blew into the interior of the ship.

"Negative pressure," Panthro's voice said over their open channel. "No life support at all. What the hell happened here?"

The two eased into the mostly-inoperative ship. Panthro landed on his feet with a thump. WilyKat engaged the mag-plates on his boots and found contact with the deck plating himself.

"Total power failure," he said lamely as they shined their handlamps about the ruined bridge. "All systems offline. What could be receiving power?"

"That's what we're here to find out. These computers are totalled. No way to get data from them."

"That's my assessment," Tygra's voice said over the comm channel. "The data banks are burnt to a crisp. I'm reading only bare minimum functions, and that's the sub-systems."

They wasted no more words, their magnetized boots giving them purchase as they made their way to the rear of the ship. A sealed door barred their progress, with a dim green light above it still active. It grudgingly slid open at their approach to reveal two suspension capsules attached to a central power bank On the far side was a golden chest, sealed tight with the ThunderCat insignia over where the lock should be.

"Oh, shit," Panthro breathed as they clomped around the conglomeration of tubes connecting the pair of suspension capsules. "This is it... To think it survived!"

"What?!"

"The Treasure of Thundera..." Panthro said in a gasp.

"THE Treasure?" Tygra's voice asked. "ALL of it?!"

"All the important parts, looks like," Panthro said, his voice muted.

"Oh, gross..."

Panthro turned to see WilyKat stagger backward clumsily, his face a shade of pale green. To his relief, the younger held down his gorge though refused to look at the suspension capsule a second time. It was enough to tell him what WilyKat had seen, though he still clomped over to the sealed capsule.

The skeleton within wore a plain blue jumpsuit which hung loosely on the exposed bones. Scraps of dessicated flesh still clung to it along with wispy strands of hair. Stasis failure was, in Panthro's opinion, the worst way to shuffle off the mortal coil. Sealed within what was meant to save one's life, only to slowly suffocate as the air was used up.

"Poor bastard," he muttered to the body before maneuvering to look into the capsule which, apparently, still functioned. "BAD way to go."

"What's going on?" Kyranna asked over the comm.

"We have two suspension capsules down here. One failed." Panthro didn't go into detail, he knew it to be unnecessary. "Checking the other one now."

Panthro finally came into position to peer into the circular window near the top...

"SHIT!"

"WHAT?!" three voices exclaimed over the circuit.

"This one's still alive..." Oh, fuck... he thought. How...

"KAT!"

"Yeah?"

"Get that chest back to the Feliner. Tygra, I need you down here."

"The auto-pilot might not..."

"This is more important!" A DAMN sight more...

"On my way. I'll set the auto to detatch and clear out in... fifty minutes."

Panthro did the math. It was good enough.

In the cargo bay of the Feliner, the suspension capsule which remained functional rested in the center of the mostly-empty floorspace. Several cables ran from the ship's power grid into the receiving ports in the rear of the device. Panthro and Tygra, still clad in pressure suits sans helmets, were staring into the viewport of the capsule.

"This is a... complication," Tygra said.

"Complication. What do we tell..."

"One thing at a time. The implications of this..."

"What implications? All of us knew that the chances of this were astronomical!"

"Still... Best get back to Third Earth." Tygra eyed the chest secured onto a shelf along the farthest wall of the cargo bay.

The Treasure of Thundera... he thought distractedly. And...

On the bridge, Panthro and Tygra resumed their seats. The umbilical now detatched, the decrepit wreck began anew its descent into the thin atmosphere of Mars. Panthro activated the Feliner's torpedo bays, arming and targeting a deadly projectile at the derelict ship.

It was a moment of sympathy for the unknown Thunderian whose remains were still entombed aboard the yacht. Panthro simply couldn't stomach the thought of this lifeless, barren world being anyone's final resting place. Better to be scattered among the stars than pulped into loose dirt that nothing had trod for unknown thousands of years.

The torpedo streaked from the open bay and impacted the ship less than a second later. The explosion was swallowed by the infinite vacuum of space, along with the subatomic particles of the unnamed corpse. So far as Panthro was concerned, it was a far kinder fate.

For Tygra, the occupant of the suspension capsule in the cargo bay drew most of his thoughts. The fact that he had survived was incredible, but what ramifications would his return have? Being no expert on the science behind suspended animation, he had no clue as to how the occupant of that capsule was holding up.

First things first...

"Feliner to Cat's Lair."

"Lair responding," Sho's voice replied.

"Tell Pumyra and Siberias to prepare for a suspension capsule. Is Lion-O back yet?

"No, he's still touring the agriculture sectors. Want me to call him back?

"No, Sho, that won't be necessary. Feliner out."

Siberias cast a look at Pumyra as the wheeled gurney rolled in with a sealed suspension capsule atop it. Cables snaked from its underside to the bottom of the gurney, on which rested several power packs. Panthro and Tygra each wore looks of deep concern as they wheeled it into the Medical Wing.

"So, what is all the secrecy about?" he asked as he neared to peer into the capsule. The sight inside caused his stomach to do a somersault.

"WHAT?!" Pumyra exclaimed on beholding its occupant.

"Can you safely revive him?"

"I think so, yes," Pumyra said on checking the medscanner in her hand. "Where did you find him?!"

"Not important," Panthro replied. "Lion-O's not due back for another four hours. Is that long enough?"

"I would say so," Siberias said, his voice calm as usual. "Ninety minutes to shut down the capsule and stabilize him will do."

"Very well. Council will convene in two hours."

"Without Lion-O?" Pumyra asked.

"Damn right," Panthro said.

Council convened that late afternoon, each ThunderCat present buzzing with either curiosity or anxiety. Most notably absent was Lion-O, who was still inspecting the farming sectors of New Thundera Colony.

"So, will he recover?" Tygra asked.

"I believe he will," Pumyra said. "The patient is resting comfortably now. I expect he'll regain consciousness in another ten hours."

"So, ThunderCats, how do we deal with this?"

"What's there to deal with?" WilyKit asked. "I'm glad he's okay..."

"Kitten," Cheetara said, her face showing her conflicting emotions, "This could throw everything we've built here into chaos."

"Why?" her brother replied. "Lion-O's king, now."

"Not according to whom we've just found," Tygra said solemnly.

"So?" Cheetara said. "All of us knew what would likely happen back then. There was no foul play in his ascending the throne!"

"Seconded," Panthro added. "If anyone's guilty of anything, it's all of us for making a perfectly logical assumption."

"That doesn't change the fact that the leadership of New Thundera Colony is now in question," Tygra said forcefully. "The law cannot be denied."

"I think the bigger question is," Cheetara began, "is how we tell Lion-O that the father he barely knew is still alive?"

What, indeed, will happen once Lion-O finds out that Claudis is still among the living, and still has a legitimate claim to the throne of New Thundera Colony? Also, what of Ratar-O's forces, and the monster named Aptom who makes himself an unknown and prominent presence amongst his Mutant troops? What is Aptom's true aim? Will his former allegiance with Guyver One affect it? All this in more in the next episode of Eye of the Storm!

Author's note: During my most recent hiatus, I've learned of a website which offers translated scans of the Guyver manga which reach well beyond what the Viz release and the 2005 anime brought these shores. is the place to go, where Guyver is continued from chapter 67 onward to 180. I am reading these myself, and have been forced to change the direction of this fic accordingly. Also, the gap between the 2005 anime & Chapter 67 of the manga is pretty short, & easily explained. For any Guyver fans reading this who want to know what happens next, is the place to go. Enjoy!