He stood as still as death itself when Luna and her steed entered the chamber and approached the other side of the cauldron. Before she could speak, Mumm-Ra cut her off. "What do you want, Luna?" he demanded.

"A favor."

"It’s rather presumptuous of you to be asking favors of me when you and your team continue to fail me time and time again."

Luna frowned at his remark and at his tone. How badly she wanted to tell that arrogant mummy what he could do with his condescending attitude… but she held back. There were more pressing matters on hand. "Chilla and TugMug are deathly sick—"

"I know," Mumm-Ra cut her off impatiently. "Your insolent hypnotist informed me of such earlier."

"And you refused to cure them."

Mumm-Ra smiled poisonously. "Is that what he told you?" He chuckled lightly to himself. "I never said I would not cure them… he was just not willing to meet my terms."

Luna narrowed her eyes. "Enslavement isn’t a term any self-respecting Lunatac would agree to."

"If you feel that way, then you are wasting your time as well. Mumm-Ra does nothing for free… least of all random acts of mercy."

Luna tightened her grip on her riding crop as she kept her temper in check. "Well you will agree to it," she pushed, her voice growing shriller in its anger. "And you’ll agree to do it now!"

Mumm-Ra’s eyes flashed with a dangerous look of warning. "Be careful how you speak to me, Luna, lest I fry you into a smoldering purple-haired heap."

"No," the tiny Lunatac leader replied. "It is you that will listen to me for once. I agreed that my people would work with you to get rid of the Thundercats. Never once did that entail your testing your magic out on them. Chilla and TugMug are on their deathbeds because of you, and I know as well as you do that you have the power to cure them. So dispense with all the

pretenses, cure them, and I’ll be on my way and leave you to your rest. If you don’t—"

"Threatening me is a very unwise choice," the mage replied in a voice colder than death. "I would think you would know that after your last failed insurrection against me."

A calculating smile crossed Luna’s harsh features. "I also know that if you didn’t need us now, you would not have freed us to begin with. And I guarantee you, if TugMug and Chilla die, you will lose more than just two allies. Those of us who remain will be against you with a vengeance."

Mumm-Ra nearly laughed. "Is that supposed to be a threat? If I want, I can be rid of two more annoying Lunatacs starting right here and now!" He raised his hand to shoot a blast of red lightning.

Luna cut him off before he could fire. "Kill me and Amok and you’ll only serve to deepen the motivation for the rest to turn on you. Alluro loathes you as it is, and for what you’ve done to Chilla, especially now that he’s found out that an unborn child of theirs is dead because of you, I can assure you that he’ll seek retribution. RedEye I’m sure would also welcome an excuse to repay you for the hell you’ve put us through since we’ve been stranded on this planet."

"I’m quaking in my bandages," Mumm-Ra remarked sarcastically.

Luna had Amok advance a few steps toward him as she continued her tirade. "Tell me, Mumm-Ra, do you really think you can take out all of us? You who is so mighty that he can’t even take care of a couple of felines without seeking out help from lowlifes like the Mutants? Unlike your planetside Plundarrian friends, we Lunatacs learn from our mistakes and won’t let you get the better of us again."

Mumm-Ra fought an urge to laugh. "What can you possibly do to Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living? And how do you think that you or any of your Lunatacs, mere mortals, can possibly stand against me?" he challenged arrogantly.

"Lion-O is mortal, and he defeats you constantly," Luna pointed out. "You know," she said, tapping her crop lightly against the palm of her hand, "I wonder how long you’d last if we all teamed up against you."

This time Mumm-Ra did laugh out loud. "You expect me to believe that you would join with the Thundercats? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard you say yet! What makes you think that they would even consider an alliance with you? They despise you and everything you stand for!"

"True, but not as much as they despise you and everything you stand for," Luna countered. "And I’m sure that after they hear our heart-wrenching tale… where we tell them how you so coldly tested your magic on TugMug and Chilla—who was carrying an innocent child no less—and then cruelly watched them die despite our pleas to you for help… that they will be all too

understanding and willing to accept our help in defeating you once and for all. Especially after they lost their dear friend Willa to the same sickness, and perhaps a few of their own. Misery loves company, you know," she with a conniving grin. "Of course we’ll be deeply sorry and repentant for all the pain we caused them in the past," she added dramatically. "And we’ll assure them that we’re more than willing to make amends and set things right in light of our new alliance..."

"As if they would believe that," Mumm-Ra scoffed. "All it would take to end that scheme would be for me to blow the whistle on it and show them the truth."

This time Luna laughed. "Really? You think after killing Willa, and perhaps Lion-O and Panthro, that they’d believe anything you said or did? Even if you showed them a vision of this very moment it would only look like a cheap attempt at undermining the newly forged alliance." The tiny Lunatac then faced the now less-than-amused Mumm-Ra eye to eye with a deadly serious expression of her own. "I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how the Thundercats will react if we go to them. But don’t mistake me, this isn’t a threat, Mumm-Ra… it’s merely a—shall we say—prediction of what will happen if you choose not to heal Chilla and TugMug to the state they were in before the stone spell was cast. You of course have a choice. You can choose to heal them and leave things in your favor, or you can choose not to and make your goal of conquering this planet that much harder. It’s your call, naturally."

Mumm-Ra glared at her, his sinister red eyes alit with contempt and hatred as he contemplated her words. While it was true that he had no fear of her or the other Lunatacs, if they were to ally themselves with the Thundercats against him it would be an added inconvenience and setback to his ultimate goal. Once again he cursed himself for releasing Luna and her crew from the molten rock. I knew I should have left them there as an ugly statue for all eternity, he thought ruefully.

He saw Luna eyeing him expectantly for a response. With displeasure he returned her gaze with a contemptuous look of his own. "You are by far the most arrogant, scheming, manipulative, and insolent wretch of a creature I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. While nothing would give me greater pleasure than watching you and your entire degenerate crew die a slow, miserable death, I will grant you this favor and cure them… if for no other reason than to keep from hearing your thrice-cursed, obnoxious voice for a moment longer."

Mumm-Ra then stepped up to the very edge of the murky pool. He stretched his arms over the water and summoned a vision of the sick Chilla and TugMug. When the images took shape, the dark mage chanted a verse of healing magic in an ancient and dead tongue. As soon as the final word was spoken, a powerful beam of blinding blue light shot from each of his hands. Both rays reached through the supernatural waters and through the very core of Third Earth itself until they reached their intended targets and surrounded both of the ill Lunatacs in their energy. Luna watched the scene in amazement as life and vibrancy poured back into them, healing in seconds the all damage that the internal stones had done over the course of the last day and a half and turning the stones themselves back into that which they had been before the spell was cast.

Once the magic finished and the waters of the cauldron calmed, Mumm-Ra stepped back and turned toward his sarcophagus. "It is done," he told Luna neutrally. "You may leave now."

Luna tapped Amok to take her toward the exit, smiling satisfactorily. "And I thank you for your generosity, Mumm-Ra," she replied with false politeness. "Until next time," she called out as she and Amok left, leaving Mumm-Ra to his rest.

While Lunatacs were grudgingly given their magical cure by Mumm-Ra, the Thundercats were busy muddling through their own means of healing their friends. Unfortunately things were not going as smoothly as Tygra originally hoped. Once they packed up all the equipment from Panthro’s room and transferred it to Lion-O’s chambers, they discovered that while Lion-O had stone deposits in his system, the vast majority of them were already in the intestinal tract as opposed to the stomach as they had been in Panthro’s case.

They had given Lion-O the formula and oil mix in a similar manner as they had to Panthro, but just like it did to him, Lion-O threw it all up within minutes of administration. It was enough to take care of the stone fragments in his stomach, but that was it. Tygra had no choice but to give Lion-O a second dose of the formulation. When Lion-O once again threw it back up long before even a fraction of it might have been digested or released into the intestines, Tygra realized he had another setback to contend with.

It was only a few moments after Lion-O vomited the second administration that a distressed-looking Pumyra stuck her head in the doorway. "Tygra, can I see you out here for a moment?"

Tygra nodded and followed her back out, closing the door behind him. He figured that whatever she had to say would probably best be not within earshot of their sick Lord if she had called him aside to discuss it. "What is it?" he asked.

Pumyra sighed. "It’s Panthro. I gave him the second dose of your medicine just like you said and it made him violently sick all over again within minutes. I know not a drop of it was digested… and he’s already lost so much fluid and is so weak from being sick… I just don’t think it’s a good idea to try and give him any more."

"I see," Tygra said with a weary sigh. "I can’t say I’m surprised. The same thing just happened with Lion-O. Apparently this mixture of chemicals is too toxic for the body to accept in an oral dose. But the fact still remains that we have to get those stone deposits out of their intestines somehow."

Pumyra thought for a moment. "Well, we could try putting a tube in, um," she searched for a polite way to phrase it, "the other end." She then blushed with embarrassment. While in her training as a healer she was used to the idea of such things, the thought of actually having to do it to a mighty warrior like Panthro and the Lord of the Thundercats himself, was even more embarrassing.

Tygra wasn’t thrilled with that idea either, but if it had to be done, then of course they would do it. "That’s an option. Provided we can insert the tube far enough in to reach all the deposits. But it would be a very long and tedious process. The intestinal tract is very, very long." He paused and thought some more. "The only other suggestion I can think of would be injecting it directly above a stone deposit so that it would dissolve on contact. But that would require a very long needle and very careful insertion."

"If we had the X-ray machine on and we could determine where the deposits were, I could probably guide a needle in. Do we even have needles the proper size for that though?"

Tygra sighed again. "They could be constructed, though usually that’s Panthro’s field of expertise. I’m more of a design-oriented type by nature, and I don’t really have the time I think it would take to make them myself. I know it will take at least another hour or two for me to make a second batch of the treatment. We lost most of what we had in giving them the oral administration. I know there isn’t enough left to take care of all the remaining stone in both of them."

"Hmm," Pumyra said thoughtfully. "You know, if you can write down the specifics of what you would need in these needles, I bet that Bengali could make them fast. Being a blacksmith he has lots of experience in crafting metal. I could call over to the Tower of Omens now and give him the information."

Tygra brightened, as that hadn’t occurred to him. Perhaps things weren’t as dire as he thought. "That’s an excellent idea! Get me a sketch pad, and we can get started."

One and a half hours later, Bengali dropped off a carefully wrapped package of forty brand new needles, specially tempered and treated in a sterile solution of alcohol as per Tygra’s request. As Pumyra guessed, they hadn’t taken him long to make. The hardest part had been crafting the first and making a mold for it, and after that each duplicate took only a fraction of the time. Even changing the lengths hadn’t been that difficult, as he simply shortened the mold a little each time.

Though he was not directly needed in the Lair after his delivery, Bengali chose to stay anyway. Ever since he had heard the news of Lion-O and Panthro’s sickness, not to mention Willa’s death, he wanted to do whatever he could to help. Fortunately things were quiet as far as enemy attacks went, and Lynx-O had assured him when he left that he and Snarfer could take care of any situation that might arise.

"So when do we try to treat them again?" Bengali asked WilyKit, who had met him in the hangar.

"I’m not sure. Snarf said Tygra’s still in his lab working on making more of that stuff last I heard."

"How are Lion-O and Panthro doing?"

WilyKit gave a little shrug. "Panthro’s a lot better than he was before, he’s staying awake and Pumyra was able to get him to eat a little bread and juice, and he hasn’t gotten sick on it yet. But Tygra said that was because most of the stone in Panthro was in his stomach in the first place and that treatment got rid of it. Lion-O’s still pretty sick though. He didn’t look that much better when I saw him before."

Bengali looked around. "Where is Pumyra anyway? Is she with Lion-O?"

WilyKit nodded. "Yeah, Snarf is too I think. He’s been staying with Lion-O whenever he wasn’t needed for anything specific."

"I can’t say that surprises me. It’s no secret how devoted he is to him."

"Yeah," WilyKit agreed. "So do you want to go tell Tygra that the needles are ready?"

"All right," Bengali agreed. "Let’s go."

The pair of Thundercats made their way to Tygra’s lab. Bengali knocked twice, and when they heard Tygra tell them that it was all right for them to come in, they entered. Tygra was standing over his bench, stirring the contents of a large glass flask. "I think it’s about ready, I just have to wait for it to cool a little more," he told them as they joined him at the bench. He glanced in Bengali’s direction. "I take it that the needles are ready if you’re here?"

"Yes. I think I broke the Thunderstrike’s speed records in getting over here with them," he replied. "We at the Tower have all been worried sick."

Tygra glanced at the flask holding his cure. "Then let’s not delay any longer. This should be cool enough by the time we get up there. Let’s go." The three of them then went upstairs to Lion-O’s bedroom. Snarf and Pumyra were already in there, and as soon as Tygra, Bengali, and WilyKit walked in, Snarf went to find Cheetara and WilyKat while Pumyra and Bengali set up the X-ray machine. Tygra was drawing up the first syringe of the stone dissolving formula when Cheetara, WilyKat, and Snarf came in.

Lion-O, halfway awake, tried to make sense of all that was going on as Cheetara and Snarf sat at his bedside, one on each side. "It’s all right Lion-O," Snarf assured him. "Tygra’s going to get rid of all that awful stone inside you, snarf snarf."

Cheetara took Lion-O’s hand in hers and squeezed it. "This isn’t going to be pleasant, Lion-O," she told him softly. "They’re going to have to use a needle to administer it… and you might need to be injected several times."

Pumyra, now fine-tuning the X-ray machine, paused and met Lion-O’s eyes. "That’s true. And we’re going to need you to stay very still while we do it, no matter how hard that is, so we can be as steady as possible."

"I understand," Lion-O answered weakly. "I’ll be all right. I’m the Lord of the Thundercats after all."

"Snarf snarf… just be careful," Snarf said, giving Pumyra and Tygra a worried look. He didn’t like the way those needles looked in the least.

Tygra nodded and walked over to the bed. He nodded to Bengali, Cheetara, and the kittens to help restrain Lion-O, and each took a position by one of his limbs. Pumyra meanwhile focused the X-ray machine over the largest deposit of stone in Lion-O’s gut. Holding himself steady as possible, Tygra placed one hand on the skin and carefully guided the needle into it.

Lion-O growled involuntarily and flinched as the sharp metal punctured his skin. Instinctively the other Thundercats held him down as Tygra pushed the needle in further and dispensed the treatment. Lion-O’s growl grew louder. "Gods of Thundera…that burns," he groaned through clenched teeth. It took every bit of strength he had to keep from fighting.

As soon as it was out, Tygra quickly withdrew the needle. The other Thundercats relaxed a bit, but Tygra held up his hand to indicate for them not to. "Don’t let him move yet… if it leaks away from the stone we’ll just have to do it again." He turned to Pumyra. "Is it working?"

"It’s bubbling… and it looks like the deposit might be getting smaller." A silence fell over the room as those who were able to watched the black and white picture on the X-ray machine’s readout. Slowly but surely the bubbling mess that was the largest stone deposit in Lion-O’s system began to clear, showing a marked reduction in size. They breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Thank Jaga, it worked," Tygra said. "But there’s no time to celebrate yet. We’ve still got a lot to do here." He drew up another syringe full of the formulation.

Pumyra smiled. "Well, as Panthro would say, if we’re going to do it—"

"—Let’s do it," Tygra finished with a small smile.

The Thundercats worked diligently for the next hour on their young Lord, finding and systematically eliminating every stone deposit that was too large to pass through his system naturally. By the time they had gotten the worst of them dissolved, they were already able to note a significant improvement in Lion-O’s condition. He was not recovered by any means, between the painful injections and the toll that the condition had already taken on his body, but he did say that the stabbing pains in his gut had subsided.

After giving Lion-O a quick examination to determine his condition, Tygra suggested that they give him a strong laxative and plenty of fluids. He explained that it was to flush the remaining stone fragments, as well as the toxic chemical by-products of his formulation, out of his system entirely as fast as possible. Snarf, who was all too happy to finally be able to do something of real help, then hurried downstairs and made a medicinal recipe he learned form his Aunt Esmerelda that was "sure to make anything go right through ya in no time at all".

Satisfied now that they had done all they could for Lion-O, the others then moved onto Panthro. Fortunately he needed far fewer injections of the solvent, and the smaller stone deposits in him dissolved much more quickly than the ones in Lion-O. In a matter of twenty minutes they were finished treating him as well, and for the first time all day they all felt genuinely hopeful and relieved.

Just as they finished packing up the X-ray machine to be taken back downstairs, WilyKat approached Tygra and Pumyra. "So is that it? Are they cured now?"

Tygra sighed and looked over at Panthro. His old friend looked tired, and while he still appeared to be in better shape than Lion-O, he had certainly seen him looking better. WilyKit was at his bedside pouring him a fresh glass of juice to go with the laxative Snarf was in the process of making for him, while Cheetara was rearranging his blanket and pillows to make him more comfortable.

Pumyra put a hand on Tygra’s forearm for support, and as a silent reminder to him to be delicate with his wording. She knew that there was no definite answer to the kitten’s question, and she knew Tygra well enough to know that he would not lie to him. He smiled faintly for a moment and faced WilyKat. "We’ve done all we can for them."

"So what do we do now then?" he asked.

Tygra sighed. "Now we wait."

Alluro didn’t know that he had fallen fast asleep in the chair at Chilla’s bedside until her rasping voice and a sudden jerking motion snapped him back into consciousness. He blinked in the darkened room and looked at her in surprise. She was not only awake, but sitting upright with the covers drawn tightly around her, save for one blue arm that had shaken him awake. "Chilla?"

"What are you doing in my room? What’s this mess? What’s going on?" she demanded.

"You’re awake," he murmured, still shocked. She had been comatose last he saw her… how was it possible that she had recovered so quickly, he wondered.

"I want to know what all this is and I want to know now," she insisted, pointing to the half-empty vials of medicines and discarded ice packs littering the nightstand and floor by her bed. She leaned forward, then shrank back slightly when she remembered she wasn’t wearing anything other than her bedclothes.

"You were very sick, Chilla," Alluro started. "I thought you were—we thought you wouldn’t survive the night," he stated, still trying to figure out how she recovered so miraculously. "You had a very high fever and weren’t even conscious." She eyed him with a curious, somewhat distrustful expression, but listened to what he was saying. When he saw she wasn’t going to interrupt, he continued. "You and TugMug both became violently ill over last night."

She nodded slightly. "I was feeling sick to my stomach so I went to lie down. I got a little worse over the night."

"That’s all you remember?" Alluro asked.

She nodded again.

"You got more than ‘a little worse’, Chilla. You developed a fever that peaked at seven and a half degrees above your normal body temperature, and you became delirious. Luna and I tried treating you—and TugMug as well—but nothing we tried worked."

"TugMug was sick too?"

"Yes. He started throwing up. He threw up stones."

"Stones?" Chilla repeated incredulously.

Alluro nodded. "Stones. It made us suspect Mumm-Ra’s magic was at fault, since you and TugMug were both changed to stone by that spell he cast with that Norvog Nage book. As it turns out, we were right."

"What do you mean?" she questioned, shifting position as she awaited his answer.

"I confronted Mumm-Ra about it, and while he was no real help, I happened to run into two Thundercats there to have a word with him about the same thing. Two of the felines were also stricken with an ailment like yours, as was the Warrior Maiden Queen Willa. The human succumbed to it."

"Hmph, one less stubborn primitive to get in our way," she remarked with a shrug.

"Anyway," Alluro continued, "with that in mind I decided to use the medical scanner I put together a few months back to see if that would show us what was making you so ill. We found stone deposits all throughout your body. It seems that that which wasn’t…" he paused as he searched for the right words "…exactly you wasn’t changed back from being stone when you were restored."

She frowned as she tried to understand what he meant, and failed. "Like what?"

"What you ate, mostly… and…" he looked away, and changed the subject. "But how did you recover, Chilla? I had no idea how to treat your condition, and Luna—"

"Did what you couldn’t manage to do," his leader’s shrill voice interrupted as she entered the room.

Alluro whirled around in surprise, while Chilla turned to glare at her barging into her room uninvited. "You did this? How?" Alluro demanded.

"Mumm-Ra," Luna answered simply. "I pointed out to him that it was in his best interests to cure TugMug and Chilla of the side effects of his spell and he agreed."

"He listened to you?" Alluro asked incredulously.

"I’m sure you know I can be persuasive in my own way, Alluro," she replied, then looked to Chilla. "You’re feeling better I see."

Chilla shrugged and shifted beneath the sheets. "I’m all right."

"Good. It would seem that Mumm-Ra’s spell did its trick then. What about TugMug?"

As if on cue to answer her question, RedEye poked his head into Chilla’s room. The now recovered ice Lunatac shrank back further in her sheets, an increasingly annoyed expression on her face. "Doesn’t anyone knock anymore?" she muttered.

"You’re better!" RedEye exclaimed, looking at Chilla. "I just came from checking on TugMug, and somehow he spontaneously recovered." His eyes flashed slightly as he eyed Chilla. "And now she did too? I thought you said it was hopeless," he said to Alluro.

"I thought it was," Alluro said quietly. "There was nothing I could do for them. Luna convinced Mumm-Ra to cure them with his magic."

"Even after he gave you the runaround?"

"So it would seem," Alluro answered, somewhat grouchily. Being shown up by Luna was not something he cared for.

"Excuse me," Chilla interrupted, her voice taking on a distinctly annoyed edge as she shifted once again underneath the sheets, "but do you mind getting out of my quarters, please?"

Luna gave Chilla a nasty look for speaking to her in such a tone, then realized why she said it and relented. "Very well, but you should be examined again so we can make sure that your condition was fully reversed. As I’m sure you can understand, I don’t exactly trust Mumm-Ra’s magic. But right now like to see TugMug’s condition for myself. RedEye, where is he?"

"He said he was going to get something to eat. Sounds to me like he’s feeling better."

"All right, let’s go find him. Alluro, in the meantime, why don’t you examine her?" Luna said, already leading Amok toward the door with RedEye following close behind.

Alluro stood and looked at Chilla, waiting for a reaction. She said nothing and lay back against the pillows. He took that as an affirmative and shut her door once Luna and RedEye left, then walked back over to her bed. She met his gaze as he approached. "I was that sick?"

Alluro nodded and started to set up the medical scanner. "It honestly didn’t look like your body would survive the stone infection. It was everywhere." He switched the power on and set it on the edge of the bed. "Are you sure you’re up to this?"

"I feel fine."

Alluro gently pulled the sheet aside, set the scanner on her torso just below her rib cage, and switched it on. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared on the screen, and not a trace of the questionable "inert material" that lit up the screen earlier could be found. "It’s all gone," he observed aloud. "I don’t see any stone left whatsoever."

"How much was there?" she questioned.

"A lot," Alluro replied, one of his ears quirking slightly to the side as he answered. He slid the scanner probe further down her abdomen, fighting an increasingly uncomfortable feeling as he awaited the answer to the burning question that he couldn’t even bring himself to mention to her. Though he tried to remain outwardly indifferent, he could feel his own heart pounding as he drew the probe over the area where he’d made the startling discovery that she was pregnant earlier. When he didn’t find stone, but what the scanner defined as "multiple tissues detected in target area" he exhaled, realizing only then that he’d been holding his breath for several moments to begin with.

Chilla noticed his intense and serious expression. "What is it?"

Alluro switched the scanner off and looked away as he set it down. "Nothing," he replied, a halting note in his voice undermining his efforts to appear indifferent. "You’re fine. It’s all healed."

"So there’s no more stone?"

"No," Alluro confirmed, finally able to turn and meet her eyes. "Everything changed back. Even… you know."

Chilla blinked, genuinely baffled as to what he was referring to. "What?"

He eyed her more intensely, trying to gauge her reaction. "You did know, didn’t you?"

Now she frowned, already tiring of his game of twenty questions. "Know what?"

"About your… child."

Chilla’s eyes widened in shock and mortification. "You knew about that?"

"You were bleeding internally, so we used the scanner to try and figure out why. That was what we found."

"We?"

"Luna was there. We discovered that, similar to what you had eaten, you carried a fetus that was not restored back to flesh along with the rest of you for whatever reason, and your body reacted very violently to its presence as stone afterward. But it seems that Mumm-Ra’s cure healed not only that but the damage the stone did to your system. There’s no evidence of physiological trauma from what I can see."

"I see." Chilla closed her eyes and sighed as it all begin to sink in. "You know, I didn’t even know for certain."

Alluro raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

She shook her head.

"If you needed confirmation, why didn’t you just have me run a blood scan? The equipment we have can test for that, so long as I set it to look for it. You could have had your answer in a matter of minutes. How long had you been keeping this to yourself?"

Chilla shrugged. "About twenty days or so, maybe twenty five. It’s not like the answer wouldn’t be obvious sooner or later anyway. Besides, there’s been no time to concern myself overly with it, with all the schemes Luna and Mumm-Ra have dragged us into," she said, rolling her eyes slightly, before she sat back up. "Just how did Luna react, anyhow?"

Alluro shrugged. "You know how Luna is. She was quite surprised… as was I, for that matter."

"Oh." Chilla’s voice was devoid of any definable emotion.

"Chilla, when exactly were you going to tell me?"

"When I thought you needed to know," she replied coolly. "Certainly not until I knew one way or the other."

"You trust me that little?"

"No, I know you too well," she corrected him. "Enough to know that telling you prematurely would only complicate matters further."

Alluro frowned. "If it’s my child that you’re having, I don’t see what’s so complicated in enlightening me to that fact. You know I care for you—"

"And that’s exactly why it’s complicated," she hissed in exasperation. "I’m a warrior at heart. A loner. A fighter. I’m not anyone’s mate or ideal, and I don’t want to be. And I knew if I told you about this, that you’d do just what I can tell you’re doing right now… looking at me in that light."

"I have no desire to have you as someone you’re not, Chilla, only as you are," he said, meeting her eyes once more. "Do you really think we feel so differently? There is a reason we wound up cast away together, cut off from all but a few of the rest of our people, here on this miserable backwater plant. Despite our quirks in personality, I think it’s a safe bet to say that all of us here are warriors, loners, and fighters at heart." He leaned over her, closing in the gap of space between them. "And really, what could be more ideal for this child of yours—of ours—than that, to be like his or her parents… and extended family," he added with a wry look as he gestured toward the door.

Chilla smiled slightly despite herself. "No child of mine will ever act like Luna, or there will be hell to pay."

Alluro made a face. "Perish the thought. And speaking of our ‘beloved leader’, do you want to tell her the news that you are both healed, then?"

Chilla shrugged. "Whatever. Might as well get it over with." Dealing with Luna was never something she enjoyed, and she avoided interacting with her whenever possible.

"What about TugMug and RedEye?"

"How much do they know? Has she told them anything?"

"I don’t know, but undoubtedly she will, when the immediate crisis is over. We both know how much Luna loves to talk… even if it’s just to hear herself do it."

"She’s the only one who wants to hear it."

Alluro laughed. "So true."

A knock sounded at the door. Realizing that Chilla was still hiding beneath the covers without a stitch of clothing on, Alluro handed her a robe hanging off the side of the chair near her bedside. Chilla slipped it on, then called for whoever it was to come in.

It was TugMug. Alluro noticed the marked improvement in his condition; like Chilla, the hi-grav Lunatac looked as though he’d never taken ill to begin with. "There you are, Alluro. Luna’s harping on me to have you give me a clean bill of health. Will you put that scanner thing on me and tell her it’s fine and to get her off my case?"

"I guess you are feeling better," Alluro observed. "All right. Let’s go." Alluro bent over, collected up the scanner and its probe in his arms, and followed TugMug to the door. He stopped in the doorway and smiled back at Chilla, who was now out of bed and stretching. "Have fun with Luna."

"I won’t," she answered with a smirk.

The dawn of the next day at Cat’s Lair was a much brighter one than the one before it, not only because the day was clear and beautiful, but because unlike the previous morning, there were no groans of pain or heaves of discomfort in either of the sick Thundercats.

WilyKit and WilyKat knocked twice on Panthro’s door. "Panthro, are you awake?"

"I’m up, come on in," Panthro’s tired voice sounded from inside.

The two kittens opened the door to see Panthro half sitting up in his bed. WilyKit went in first and held the door for her brother, who carried in a tray of food holding some fruit juice and still-hot golden pancakes smothered in candyfruit syrup. WilyKat set it down on the nightstand while WilyKit sat on the edge of his bed. "Snarf made some breakfast for you. How are you feeling this morning?"

Panthro smiled. "I can say I’ve felt better, but overall, a heck of a lot better than yesterday." He took a bite of the pancakes. "Hey, not too bad… sure tastes a lot better than that medicine Tygra made. That stuff tasted like motor oil."

WilyKat wrinkled his nose. "I wouldn’t be surprised if part of it was motor oil. You don’t want to know how many chemicals he got from your workshop when he was making it."

WilyKit made a disgusted face. "WilyKat!"

"What?"

"That’s disgusting! And Tygra wouldn’t give Panthro anything like that," she said, her voice lapsing into the lecturing tone that she often gave him when she thought he made a remark that was rude or out of line.

WilyKat frowned. "I didn’t mean that."

Panthro grinned. "It’s all right WilyKat, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was motor oil either. Tygra can try just about anything and make it work."

"Yeah, kinda like you and machines," WilyKit agreed with a smile.

"Speaking of which," WilyKat interrupted, breaking into a wide grin, "any chance that you’d let me learn to drive the Thundertank while you’re getting better?"

Panthro laughed. "Try again in a few years, WilyKat. I’m not that sick."

Down the hall, Snarf brought an identical tray of juice and pancakes to Lion-O’s bedside, and opened the shade when he saw that the young Lord was awake. "Snarf snarf, oh Lion-O, how do you feel this morning?" he asked, laying a paw on his shoulder.

Lion-O yawned and stretched, then winced with pain—not from the stone sickness, but from the twenty or so intramuscular injection sites in his lower abdomen. "A little sore from Tygra’s treatment, but not too bad otherwise," he answered. "Though I was in the bathroom half the night."

"Rowr, sorry about that, Lion-O, that was my Aunt Esmerelda’s special medicine that Tygra had me give you. It’s stronger than half a bottle of Snarfamucil. He wanted to make sure all that awful stuff that dissolved the stone was out of you as fast as possible. And I’m glad, that sure made you sick, snarf snarf. I guess sometimes the cure is worse than the disease."

Lion-O sat up, took the juice, and sipped it. "Oh I wouldn’t say that, Snarf. It wasn’t fun, but it’s better than… the alternative." He lowered his eyes in sadness for a moment. "Cheetara was in here later last night, and she told me about Willa. I’d like to try and make it to the Tree Top Kingdom to offer Nayda my condolences and pay my respects to Willa. She was a good friend. I can’t believe she’s really gone."

A worried look crossed Snarf’s face. "I don’t know, Lion-O, I think you should rest. You can go tomorrow."

"I’d like to go now. Especially since what happened to her was indirectly our fault."

"What?"

"Mumm-Ra’s evil scheme with the Norvog Nage is what sent the Lunatacs into the Tree Top Kingdom to raid them for that mask. Willa became involved because of that… and she was turned to stone. The sickness that we suffered cost her life. I feel I owe it to go and see Nayda as soon as possible. I know Tygra was there yesterday, but…"

Snarf nodded. "I understand, Lion-O," he said with a weary sigh. "I don’t like it, but I know why you want to. Old Snarf raised you right, even though sometimes it drives me nuts."

Lion-O patted Snarf on the head. "I knew I could count on you to understand. But… I do suppose I could stay in bed and finish these delicious-looking pancakes you brought me first."