It was too quiet.
WilyKit lowered her box of parts with a sigh. Of course Felline and Cheetara had made her and WilyKat stay behind. Felline and Cheetara seemed to think the twins' days alone in Dog City, in which they'd first become part of and then broken up Tookit's ring of thieves and scored the Forever Bag for themselves, were a fluke. So even though they, the ThunderKittens, excelled at reconnaissance, they were stuck being cubsat.
And of course Panthro had to pick today to reorganize the cargo bay and the part of it he'd claimed as his workshop. WilyKit dug her big toe into the dirt around her box, not quite daring to kick it. They'd just left Avista City and the berbils, and New Thundera not long after. They hadn't even been in any battles yet! The Feliner was in perfect condition. But nooooo . . . Preparedness Was Survival!
Kit wiped her arm across her forehead. Even though the sun was going down, it hadn't cooled off any. She preferred the dry heat of Dog City to this . . . this . . . this smothering heat that sucked her energy from her. If only it weren't so quiet!
Her brother shuffled down the path they had begun to wear in the tall prairie grass. With a sigh, he set his box next to Kit's.
He wiped his arm across his forehead. Kit watched him, knowing that the discontent currently pulling his features into a frown was doing the same to hers.
She became aware of the humming at the same time he did. Their left ears twitched in unison.
Lost in his well-maintained and imaginary world where nothing upsetting ever happened, Snarf trotted down the path. He surveyed the trays of materials and parts sorted and ready for Panthro's inspection, and then chose a tray of lightbulbs. He tottered back toward the Feliner, balancing the tray on his back.
WilyKit couldn't tear her gaze from those bulbs. Perfect bulbs. Some were tiny. Some were huge. Some clear, some colored, some frosted. Round. Elongated. Spiraled. All shone in the orange spears of light from the setting sun. All tinkled with every careful step.
The petcat hummed his cheerful tune to himself, happy to cubsit if it meant his master could have some time alone, happy to assist the big, bad-tempered general for whom he'd once played nursemaid.
Well, he was happy, but they weren't.
The twins didn't speak a word to each other. They didn't need to. Wicked grins spread across their faces.
Dropping to all fours, WilyKit scampered around the stacks of boxes one way. Her brother went the other. She crawled beneath clouds of gnats that were barely discernible against the purpling sky toward another tray. This one was full of glistening crystal and metal pieces as fragile as paper, all repaired with slick epoxy. Now that the sun had set and taken its drying power with it, Kit was sure Snarf would pick this tray next. She pulled a bit of fishing line out of a pouch and quickly tied it around one of the pieces. Then she tied the other end to a nearby rock, anchored in the ground. She left enough slack to compensate for Snarf's height.
Keeping out of sight of the open cargo bay doors, she raised her head to check on her brother. He squeezed the last globs of the chemical goo that made the base of one of their bombs out of a tube, forming a clear puddle on the ground. They'd gotten the idea from Conquedor back in Berbil Village. The gel was sticky. It was smelly. Without all the dye and glitter, it was hard to spot. WilyKat gave her a thumbs up that she copied.
The humming was coming back. Kit and Kat took off in a puff of dust. They shinnied up the one tree in their campsite and concealed themselves in its foliage.
Oblivious, Snarf trotted over to the trapped tray. He balanced it on his back.
The fishing line tautened.
Snarf started to walk away.
Crystal and fragile metal smashed on the ground in a tinkling, crashing symphony. Their terrified friend-turned-cubsitter leaped several feet straight up, his four legs churning the air, his tail thrashing. The tray hit the ground with a resonant clang.
Snarf landed in the slippery gel. His legs tangled with his tail. His whiskers snarled with his forelegs.
"Snyar-ar-ar-arf!" he cried.
Right before he faceplanted.
He lay, his tasseled ears drooping, the tufted tip of his tail resting on his nose. He surveyed the mess on the ground wearily.
"Nyaa," he sighed.
WilyKat and WilyKit laughed into their hands, battling to keep the sound muffled. Tears streamed down their cheeks.
"SNARF!" Panthro bellowed, closer than Kit had expected.
Snarf jumped so high and so fast that she lost sight of him. Then a red ball of fur descended like a meteorite into Panthro's face. Panthro gurgled. Snarf clung to the general's ears, his coat on end, his green eyes bigger than a giant caterpillar's.
Panthro peeled the shaking petcat off his face. He held Snarf by the scruff. Snarf dangled from Panthro's metal claws sheepishly. They stared at each other. Snarf attempted to grin, showing his blunted fangs, and spread his little pink paws in a what-can-I-say? gesture. Gel oozed down Panthro's brow, his nose, his long white sideburns.
WilyKit and WilyKat burst out laughing harder than before. They forgot to keep it quiet.
Panthro looked up. His eyes bored through the leaves like they shot twin laser beams.
"Uh, oh," Kat said. "Sis, I think it's time to make our exit."
"Brother, I couldn't agree more," she replied.
Together, they swarmed headfirst down the tree like a couple of skirlls, circling the trunk to throw off Panthro's aim. One after the other, they landed on the dry, dusty ground. Kit leaped after Kat.
With the hiss of hydraulics, a huge metal hand clamped around her midsection. WilyKit squeaked. A second hand squashed WilyKat flat in the grass, and then scooped him up. It flipped him upside-down as it retracted. WilyKat squawked. The kittens came to a halt six inches from the general's thunderous face. Snarf perched on his shoulder, grooming sticky goo out of his fur with nimble claws.
"Uh. Hi, Panthro," Kat said, still upside-down. His feet and his tail waved stupidly in the air.
Kit couldn't speak. She could have sworn she saw a fanatical gleam in Panthro's good eye, but that could have been the fact that the sun had just disappeared behind the mountain range.
"You have some time on your hands, I see," Panthro said in a chillingly quiet purr, smiling in a lock-jawed, manic-eyed kind of way. Kit's tail puffed up to twice its normal size. Wow, was a panther ever scary in the dark!
"Uh, yeah, see, about that." WilyKat made a ptttbbth noise. The high collar of his tunic kept slipping into his mouth. "We were just—" pfffb—"testing—" ptooff "a theory we had—woah-oah-OAH!"
He hollered like a dog with its leg caught in a snowmeow's jaws as Panthro shook him vigorously up and down. Everything came cascading out of WilyKat's pockets, including the tubes of gel on which they'd worked so hard.
"Hey!" and "Ouch!" the twins cried at the same time, because Panthro dropped them on the ground. He unhooked a small lantern from his belt, clicked it on, set it at his feet, and then knelt, sorting through Kat's possessions. A rather spiky-looking Snarf hopped off his shoulder and circled around to watch.
WilyKat rubbed his head. "You can't take that stuff. It's ours."
Panthro picked the tubes of goo out of the pile, along with a small candyfruit Kat had been saving for dessert.
"Yeah, Panthro," Kit put in, rubbing her backside. Her gaze followed the candyfruit. It was their last one. "It was just a prank. It's so boring here."
"We don't have anything to do," WilyKat added. "We should be out there! Helping!"
For a moment, Panthro looked as though he were chewing on what he wanted to say, rolling the tubes in one large hand. He popped the whole candyfruit into his mouth and chewed on that, instead. Kat drooped.
WilyKit scooted closer to her brother. She took hold of his sleeve. When he leaned closer in response, she was comforted. Getting caught by Panthro for a bit of mischief was nowhere near as bad as getting cornered by a pack of angry, armed dogs for stealing the entire stock out of a jewelry store. The raccoon, Tookit, had used them as a cover for his thievery and had abandoned them once they had refused to keep stealing for him. Still, she couldn't escape the feeling that this was somehow worse, because Panthro was their friend.
She and Kat huddled together under the triple moonlight, inside the circle of yellow light from the lantern, waiting for Panthro to explode.
Except he didn't. He swallowed, smacked his lips a few times in apparent relish, and then crossed his arms, tucking the fist holding the tubes against his side. "You know, you're right," he said in a tone of mock revelation.
WilyKit glanced sidelong at WilyKat.
"Uh . . . we are?" Kat asked.
"These are yours. You can have them back," Panthro said.
He held out his hand, showing them the tubes. As well as the holes his metal claws had punctured in them.
Fast as thought, he squeezed. Smelly, sticky goo squirted full in Kit's face. She shrieked. So did Kat, who seemed to have caught the ricochet.
"Blech." Kat coughed, holding up his dripping arms. "It feels like I just got licked by a tongue-a-saurus with a cold."
Ewwww. Again, WilyKit couldn't speak. She was afraid the stuff would get in her mouth, and no part of her was dry enough to wipe it clean.
Panthro threw back his head and burst into laughter, long and loud. Snarf's hissing giggles joined his laughter.
WilyKit turned to Kat, expecting to share an aggrieved look and maybe formulate a plan for revenge, but he looked so ridiculous with his hair plastered to his head by what appeared to be a deflated jellyfish and a mustache of goo quivering from his upper lip that she, too, burst out laughing. So did he, pointing at her.
This was all right, Kit supposed, as her stomach started to ache from her giggles. There were times she missed home, Mother, and her younger siblings so badly that she couldn't sleep. If he heard her whimper in the night, Kat always crawled into her bunk with her. Sometimes he would let her cry for Father, who had been killed during a storm that hadn't left enough of the harvest for his family to sell. Other times, Kat reminded her that someday they would find the legendary city of El-Dara, and that they would fill the Forever Bag with its treasure. Kit loved to imagine her poor mother's sad, tired face lighting up when they dumped the wealth of lions in her lap. She and Kat had agreed not to use the treasure already in the Bag, because they hadn't gotten it themselves. They needed El-Dara. It was their secret, their promise. They had sworn to do this themselves on the night they ran away so that their mother would have two fewer mouths to feed.
All laughed out, Kit braced herself on her hands, and Kat did the same. Together, they shook themselves dry. Gel splattered everywhere, sending Snarf hightailing it behind the boxes. Panthro threw up his arms, yelling for a cease-fire.
"Gross!" Cheetara's startled voice came out of the darkness. "What is this?"
A/N: Hello, Dearest Readers! It has been far too long, hasn't it? I'm so sorry - and I'm so thankful that you're still here, patiently waiting for these updates. I admit that I have been grappling with the enormity of this project again. I want to stay faithful to canon, what little there is, but I also want to tell it my way. Big things are coming and I don't have the faith that I will be able to handle them well. Don't worry - I'm going to try! Because I know you all have my back!
Reviewer Thanks! KelseyAlicia, Atea1793, Darwin, allurascastle, AndrianaWarrior7, Blacktiger93, The Night Whisperer, St4r Hunter, Heart of the Demons, Champion of Justice, Seeds of Destruction, FallingStar5027, and Wondering Lyra. I have so many of you to thank, and I am so grateful for that. This is for you, guys. Thank you.
Luv ya!
Anne