CHAPTER 20
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The Cheetah People began to fight with the Shadow's corrupted Cheetahs, and the planet started to shake as they did so. As the fighting between them grew worse, the shaking of the planet intensified as well.
"What's going on? Are we having an earthquake?" Amanda cried out in fear.
"The planet is linked to the Cheetah People themselves. They have a symbiotic relationship. When the Cheetahs fight with each other, it makes the planet shake and come apart. The more they fight, the worse the planet reacts," Dorothy explained to Amanda.
"I understood most of that I think," Amanda said with a grin.
"I really did hang around with the Professor for too long, didn't I?" Dorothy said with a giggle.
Katherine couldn't help but smile at the exchange between them. She was happy that Amanda seemed to have found a new friend in Dorothy. It was good for Amanda to laugh some again after the horrible ordeal that she had only recently gone through in her life with losing her parents.
"So the more they fight, the worse the shaking will get? Could the planet actually rip itself apart if they fight too much?" Michelle asked.
"Oh, yes. The planet could tear itself to pieces if they keep up like this," Donna said gravely.
"Maybe that's what this Shadow wants," Ileana speculated.
"I don't think the Shadow cares what happens to this planet as long as he gets ahold of Dorothy. We can't let him bring his master back to life," Donna said.
"Who is his master?" Ileana asked.
"He's someone who's supposed to be dead. I'm going to have to warn Rose about this soon. If that dumbo is coming back, then no one in the whole flipping universe is safe," Donna said mysteriously.
"There are so many cats! I can barely control the wolf. She senses the cats all around me. She wants to tear them to pieces!" Victoria said with tears in her eyes.
"Don't you do it, Vicki! I don't want to have to worry about you and the Giant Kitties too. Keep it together," Donna said.
"I'm sorry, Donna. I can't! The wolf can't be controlled!" Victoria shouted as she began to change.
"No! Not now! Vicki! Stop it!" Donna shouted at her.
Dorothy quickly walked up to her and laid her hand on her forehead. Dorothy began to glow with Vortex energy, and Victoria's transformation reversed itself instantly.
Victoria looked at her with gratitude as she said, "Thank you!"
"It's only temporarily. You're going to have to learn how to control your animal side eventually by yourself. For now though, maybe you should see how you like fighting as the wolf when it's just you in charge," Dorothy said with a wink.
"What do you mean? You mean I could change and be in total control?" Victoria asked in disbelief.
"Yes, just this once. If you want to be in control all of the time, you'll have to learn how to do it by yourself. Maybe if I let you experience total control just this once, it might give you some motivation to try harder to take control of the wolf yourself in the future," Dorothy said.
Victoria looked at her uncertainly. She wasn't sure if she wanted to become the wolf or not, even if she was going to be in total control for once. She had had semi control of the wolf once before when Rose had been around, but even then she was afraid that she might lose control again at any moment.
"Go ahead," Dorothy encouraged her.
"Wait a minute. Are you sure about this?" Donna asked worried.
"Yeah, just this once she'll be fine," Dorothy said with complete certainty.
Victoria summoned up all of her courage, and then she changed of her own free will. She felt an exhilaration like she'd never felt before. She was full of power and energy, and her now enhanced senses were providing her with all kinds of valuable new information about each and every thing going on around her at once.
She could smell the carefully controlled fear of Amanda and resolved not to get too near her so that she didn't wind up scaring her more. She could also smell the presence of hundreds of more Cheetah People coming their way. Some of them she could tell were different from the others. She realized that they were the Shadow's.
The Shadow himself felt wrong somehow to all of her senses. He smelt old and decayed like carrion which made sense since he already looked like a corpse. She wondered how he could even be walking around.
She gave the wolf's equivalent of a smile to herself as she realized that she was still herself just more powerful and better connected to the world around her than she had ever been in her life. Being the wolf could be so wonderful if she could just control it like this all of the time she thought.
"Vicki, are you okay?" Donna asked her.
"I . . . am . . . fine," Victoria said slowly in a guttural voice. It took all of her concentration to do it.
Donna was shocked that Victoria could actually speak although it was hard for her. "I'm glad. Are you sure that you're going to be okay?" Donna asked, still worried.
Victoria would have laughed if she had still been capable of doing so in this form. Donna sounded like a mother. Victoria slowly put her arm around Donna so as not to scare her and gave her a light one-armed hug.
"I'll take that as a yes. Just look out for yourself, Wolf Girl. Don't be getting too overconfident and think that you can take on the entire Cheetah army all by yourself!" Donna warned her.
"Yes . . . mother!" Victoria said.
"Oi! I'm not trying to be your mom, Vicki. I'm just looking out for you as your friend that's all," Donna said with irritation.
"I think I liked her better when she couldn't talk," Ileana said with a grin.
"Stuff . . . it, Fang . . . Girl!" Victoria said.
"No fighting, you two, or I'll slug both of you! We've got enough trouble with the Cheetah People. The evil Cheetahs are about to break through the line of good Cheetahs that are so far protecting us so I don't need to deal with you two at the same time as them," Donna said in a strained voice.
"We were just kidding around like we always do, Donna," Ileana said.
"Yes . . . no . . . harm . . . meant," Victoria agreed.
"I know. I'm sorry to yell at you two. This whole thing is worrying me. I have the Shadow and his lame master on one hand and the Kitties of Death on the other. Now, I've got to worry about Vicki going kill crazy too," Donna said with a sigh.
"I'm . . . fine," Victoria said.
"Yeah, you keep saying that, but I'm still not convinced," Donna said.
"I'll watch out for her so that you don't have to if that will make you feel any better," Michelle offered.
Donna weighed it over in her mind for a minute; and then she said, "Okay. Just make sure that you keep an eye out for yourself too, Mirror Girl."
"I . . . don't . . . need . . . a . . . babysitter!" Victoria protested.
"I never said you did. I'm just trying to give Donna one less thing to worry about. She's going to drive herself crazy with the pressures of her new job. I figured that I'd give her some much needed stress relief if I told her I'd keep an eye out for you," Michelle whispered in a low voice that she knew that Victoria could hear with her enhanced hearing but that Donna could not.
Ileana smiled at her because she heard her as well with her own super hearing and had appreciated the sentiment. She had begun to worry about Donna herself and was glad that Michelle was taking steps to help keep her from stressing out too much over their current situation. She smiled to herself as she realized just how quickly they had all become good friends and had started watching out for each other.
Then there was no more time for introspection on anyone's part as the Shadow's Cheetahs broke through the wall of the original Cheetahs that had been protecting the Bad Wolves up until now. The Shadow Cheetahs began to savagely attack all of the Wolves at once.
Most of the Wolves were able to protect themselves but Amanda and Elisabeta were not, and the others had to keep a special watch out for them. They arranged themselves around the two of them in a protective circle while Elisabeta, who was immortal, held Amanda close to her and shielded her with her body as much as she could.
Dorothy was now cutting loose for the first time in a very long time with her Vortex powers. She closed her eyes and concentrated. As she did so, she glowed with energy; and all of the Shadow Cheetahs around them were flung backwards with enormous force and thrown several feet away.
"You will be mine. Your friends will not save you from me," the Shadow said as he started to attack Dorothy with dark energy bolts from his hands.
"I don't need them to save me. I can take care of myself. I'm going to send you back to whatever hole that you crawled out of," Dorothy said with a confident smile as she reflected his energy bolts back at him with ease with one outstretched hand.
The two of them began to do battle with each other as the Shadow purposely kept Dorothy distracted and unable to help the others as she now had to concentrate on protecting herself from his continuous assaults. Taking advantage of this, the Shadow Cheetahs quickly returned with a vengeance and began to tear through the other Cheetahs as they again tried to get to the Bad Wolves.
Victoria watched several of the Cheetahs fall badly wounded and maybe even dying all around her, and the site of it all sickened her. She decided to become more proactive and charged into the midst of the fighting to help her new allies.
Michelle called to her to stop, but she wouldn't listen. Remembering her promise to Donna, the former Family of Blood member made several men out of the dirt around her and used them to help Victoria. Michelle's dirt men were shielding Victoria on all sides now and protecting her from harm as much as they could.
Michelle, being distracted by watching over Victoria, almost lost her own life as one of the Shadow Cheetahs came very close to slicing her belly open. Luckily, Michelle noticed the attack just in time and sent the Cheetah to the Mirror Verse.
She quickly realized what she had just done though when she heard the Shadow Cheetah began to do battle with Alina, who she had forgotten was still in the Mirror Verse.
"Oh, thank you so much, Sister of Mine! Now this is a meal!" Alina said with glee.
"That's not my name anymore, and you're not to touch that one," Michelle said to her.
"He was trying to kill you so why not? It's self-preservation, Sister of Mine. If you set him back out there, he'll try again," Alina said while she fought with the Shadow Cheetah.
"Stop calling me that! I'm not that person anymore!" Michelle protested.
"You can deny who you are all you want; but at the end of the day, you're still exactly like me. You're just a monster with delusions of grandeur, and that's all that you are," Alina taunted her.
"Shut up!" Michelle shouted at her; and her teammates, who had no idea what was going on, looked at her with concern.
Michelle brought the Shadow Cheetah back out of the Mirror Verse and deposited him at the back of the lines with his own people. He didn't look any the worse for wear really she noticed with relief.
"You're a spoilsport. Oh, well, at least I got a good fight out of it for a minute," Alina said to Michelle.
"I'm nothing like you," Michelle said to her.
"Keep telling yourself that, Sister of Mine," Alina snapped back.
"Don't listen to her," Abraham said to Michelle.
Michelle looked at him with surprise as she asked, "You can hear her?"
"No, but I've known her for over a hundred years, Michelle. I know what she's likely to be saying to you. She's trying to make you doubt yourself and believe that you're no better than her, right? She's trying to mess with your head. Don't let her do it. Just destroy her, and get it over with it," Abraham advised her.
"What if Rose had felt that way about me?" Michelle asked with sadness.
"Watch out for her is all I'm saying," Abraham said.
Michelle nodded and said nothing more.
"You're going to have to watch out for her and make sure that Alina doesn't mess with her head too much. Don't let her talk her into believing that she's an evil person once again. She would love that," Abraham said to Ileana.
"Don't worry. I'm not about to let that happen. That witch is not to going to undo all of the hard work that Michelle's put into bettering herself if I can help it," Ileana said.
Victoria and Michelle's dirt men were working very well together and were giving the Shadow Cheetahs major trouble. Ileana, Abraham, and Katherine now joined in, and the Shadow Cheetahs started being driven back and routed very easily by the addition of their power and skill. The Shadow Cheetahs were no match for the strength of the two vampires, and none of them could hold a candle to Abraham's skill in battle.
Donna did her best to help by using her sonic screwdriver to assault the senses of the Shadow Cheetahs and disorient them. Several of them fell over from dizziness or started throwing up on the spot all around her. Donna loved this new setting that she had created on her screwdriver. She called it the Upchuck or the Roller Coaster. She smiled deviously to herself as she watched the Shadow Cheetahs continue to throw up all around her. Some days she really loved her job!
The tide of the battle was definitely going in favor of the Bad Wolves as the Shadow Cheetahs were falling back and retreating by the dozens. Those that weren't currently emptying their stomachs that is!
Dorothy and the Shadow were still evenly matched, and it seemed as if it was going to continue that way for some time to come. Then something happened to break the stalemate between them as the Shadow decided to play dirty. He gestured at a spot behind Dorothy and sent dark energy behind her. Dorothy had no idea what the Shadow was up to since she couldn't see what he had hit behind her, but it seemed like he had just shot the ground with an energy burst. She had no idea what he thought that that was going to accomplish by that.
She found out just what he had done though seconds later as a portal opened up behind her and out popped Loki.
"Hiya, Ace. Did you miss me?" Loki asked with an evil grin.
"I've been waiting to have a rematch with you for a long time. I owe you one for what you almost did to me and Rose on Asgard!" Dorothy said with anger in her voice.
"I actually haven't done that yet, but thanks for telling me about it. I'm sure it's going to be great fun! Then again, if my pal here brings back his long lost buddy, then that future may prove to be moot. After all, those cosmic types tend to be able to drastically change the future when they want to. Your BFF Rose certainly changed enough things," Loki said.
"You're not going to win. Rose will beat you just like she always has," Dorothy said.
"Don't count on it, Ace old girl. This time things are going to go my way. When I get through, you're going to be our new little puppet. We're going to use you to defeat Rose once and for all and start Ragnarok ahead of schedule!" Loki said with a chuckle.
"Bring it on. I can take both of you at the same time! I'm much more powerful than I was when I was a teenager!" Dorothy promised them.
"We'll see about that, Old Gal! We'll just see about that," Loki said with an angry glare on his face.
Then Loki and the Shadow both began to attack Dorothy at once, and she quickly found herself in for the battle of her life. She looked to see that the Bad Wolves were still being kept too busy by the Shadow Cheetahs to even notice that she was now in deep trouble. She was going to have to get out of this by herself!
Next: Dorothy fights for her life with the future of the universe at stake. Will she fall and become the new body for the Shadow's master to return through? Not if Donna Noble has anything to say about it!