Tygra sat at the circular table in New Cat’s Lair’s council room, scribbling notes onto a pad with a worn pencil as he carefully studied a passage in an arcane text, one of many that were spread out in a disorganized fashion on the tabletop in his immediate vicinity. Cheetara stepped into the room, dimly lit now that the outside daylight was fading and he hadn’t bothered to switch on extra lights, and turned on the overhead lamp above the table. Startled, Tygra blinked and looked, up at his visitor. "Oh, hello Cheetara," he greeted her, then returned his attention to his work.

"Hi Tygra," Cheetara answered, and sat on the chair beside him at the table. "What have you been working on for all this time?"

"All this time?"

"You’ve been in here since we finished breakfast and it’s nearly dinnertime now. You spent a good part of yesterday in here too. What have you been working on?"

"Not so much working on as I’ve been learning about," he replied, and stretched in his seat. Now that Cheetara had brought his attention to the amount of time he’d spent in here, he could feel it in his muscles. "I’ve been studying the texts and interpretations of the Ancients’ Star Scrolls."

Cheetara blinked in surprise. "You’ve been reading up on astrology?"

"Yes, why?"

"It just surprises me, that’s all," the cheetah answered. "You have to admit it seems a little unexpected coming from a scientist like you. Is there any particular reason you’ve been researching it?"

"I’ve been looking for answers," Tygra replied solemnly.

"Answers to what?"

"The Birth Hour of Darkness."

"WilyKit. The twins," Cheetara guessed. She laid a sympathetic hand on his forearm and met his amber eyes. "I’ve been worried about them too. We all have. It’s been almost two days since we’ve been able to get a clear transmission to the Third Moon of Plundarr to find out if WilyKit is all right and we’ve still got nothing. It’s almost like the communicator is reaching out to something that simply isn’t there."

"I don’t like that," Tygra said softly, casting a momentary glance at the notepad in front of him. "Have you had any luck with your sixth sense or Lion-O with Sight Beyond Sight yet?"

Cheetara shook her head. "My sixth sense doesn’t tell me anything concrete, and what it does suggest I almost wish it didn’t. It gives me this horrible feeling that WilyKit is suffering greatly, and that wherever she is, she’s beyond our reach," she said sadly. "And when Lion-O looked with the Sword of Omens, all he could make out was here somewhere outside… it must have been nighttime, because he said it was dark all around… screaming in agony. He asked it to show more, but it went blank on him right after that."

Tygra frowned and set his pencil down. "How is Lion-O, anyway? Last I saw, he was distant… is he still angry?"

Cheetara nodded. "About the fact that we knew Claudus was the twins’ father and didn’t tell him, yes, he’s still very upset. I don’t think he’s so much angry as he is hurt, but our inability to reach the twins is only compounding his emotional stress at this point."

"You’re his mate, Cheetara… has he opened up to you about it at all?"

"Not really," she answered. "He says he just wants to forget about it and not talk about it, and you know there’s no sense forcing him to talk about something that he doesn’t want to, especially when we do have more pressing issues to worry about, like the twins."

"Which we can’t do anything about without knowing where they are or how to reach them," Tygra finished with a sigh. "So what do we do now?"

"Panthro says if he doesn’t hear from them by tomorrow morning he and Bengali are taking the Feliner I to the Third Moon of Plundarr to investigate firsthand. Lion-O agreed to that so the plan is set. That’s what I came in here to tell you, actually."

Tygra let out a small, tired laugh. "And you come in and find me sitting here reading about the stars… I’m sorry, Cheetara. I should have been out there with the rest of you."

"We’re all dealing with this in different ways, Tygra," she told him with a reassuring smile. "I know you would have been out there if you were really needed." She glanced at his pile of books and notes. "Have you found what you were looking for?"

"I located the twins’ birth records, and with them was a star chart cast by the Thundercat Sibera not long after they were born. It’s actually quite helpful as I really don’t know enough about it to cast a chart myself, but with what I have here and some of what I’ve read in these texts I’ve been able to interpret some of it. I’ve also learned a lot about the Birth Hour of Darkness in general."

"What’s so important about it?" Cheetara inquired. "I thought the hours of birth and what they meant were essentially just superstition from the mists of antiquity."

"I used to think that too, until I remembered what Sibera said all those years ago when Grune left the Thundercats, and when Snarfer told us about WilyKit and her pregnancy and the Lunatac responsible for it. The parallels to Grune and Scarlette were startling enough that a lot of things I that were said back then started coming back to me," Tygra explained. He pulled out a chair next to him and indicated for Cheetara to sit down. She took the seat and waited for him to continue. He reached for some of his notes as a quick reference and showed them to her. "First off, this is WilyKit’s birth chart."

Cheetara glanced at the document, containing a diagram with some geometric designs and symbols she didn’t really recognize, and met Tygra’s eyes with a questioning gaze. "This is kind of over my head, Tygra. I can’t read this."

"Mine too, somewhat, though with some help I was able to learn a few things. See this point here?" Tygra gestured to a spot on the paper that had a small symbol and a numeric value next to it. Cheetara gave a nod, then he resumed speaking. "That refers to her hour of birth and how strong an influence it is. This symbol means the Hour of Darkness, and from my understanding, the lower the number, the more powerful the influence. Her number is 002, on a scale of 001-999."

"Wow," Cheetara breathed. "That’s pretty low."

Tygra nodded. "Only two other Thundercats in history, aside from WilyKat—who has a number of 067—have been born on this hour. One was Felidian of the Jaguar clan, four generations past. His was a higher number, somewhere in the 600’s. The other was Grune the Destroyer. His number was 014."

Cheetara’s eyes widened in alarm. "Wait a minute… you’re saying that WilyKit’s is even stronger than Grune’s?"

"WilyKit’s is one of the strongest on record. Making this even more significant is that this hour, the Hour of Darkness, as well as its’ linked hour—the Hour of Light—both occur times of the day when statistically there are the fewest births of any other hour. It’s also been noted, and apparently backed up with census information from Old Thundera, that those who are born on those hours have a higher infant and youth mortality rate than any other of the ten hours. Some of the old scholars said it was a curse, that the pair of hours was touched by the hand of death. Of the few would make it to adulthood, they would often suffer great losses in their youth, usually family and especially parents. There is one gift bestowed to those born on these hours though…"

"What?"

"They have greater inherent power than those born on any other hours. The ones born on the Hour of Light have it a bit easier though… their personality is not a destructive one by nature. But the ones on the Hour of Darkness tend to have a more hedonistic, indulgent streak, one that encourages them to use their inherent power in ways that are not only selfish and self-destructive, but downright abusive to others as well."

Cheetara frowned. "That’s a nice thing to tell a child when it’s born… that it’s going to grow up evil," she muttered.

"No, it doesn’t say the hour is evil," Tygra corrected her. "Individuals of any hour can be evil, and conversely one born on the Hour of Darkness can be great and noble. Felidian was an example of that. But it does take a strong will and the right environment to keep that destructive tendency from being encouraged, according to these texts. I would like to think that WilyKit has had that most of her life."

"So what does this mean, then? That this birth hour of hers is affecting what happened to her during her disappearance?"

"I think it is."

"Poor WilyKit," Cheetara said softly. The two of them lapsed into silence as the ominous implications of what Tygra told her settled in. After several moments, she turned to Tygra. "Given what you’ve told me, especially if she has the potential to become as… destructive—" she couldn’t bear to use the word "evil" in reference to the one she’d known as the sweet girl she once helped raise to become the Thundercat she was today, "—as someone like Grune the Destroyer, it only makes it that more urgent for us to find her and reach out to her."

"That’s another thing that concerns me, Cheetara. She wasn’t herself the last time we saw her. Remember when she returned from her disappearance? She was withdrawn, edgy, and she just didn’t look well. I don’t know if she talked to you much in those couple of weeks, but I know she didn’t seem right to me."

Cheetara paused thoughtfully for a moment before answering. "She seemed to be stressed, but remember she forgot several weeks of her life, Tygra. That had to be wearing on her. I know she wasn’t feeling well, but when I tried to talk with her in more depth, she either brushed me off with an excuse or said it was because she wasn’t sleeping well. She wouldn’t open up more than that. She may have to WilyKat, but if she did, he didn’t confide in me."

Tygra set his pen and notepad back down and leaned back in the chair. "There’s something else. You know how we ended up telling Lion-O the truth about Claudus and Scarlette and the twins the day that we found out about WilyKit’s pregnancy?" Cheetara nodded an affirmative and Tygra continued. "I don’t know if I told you this, but shortly after she returned from her missing time, she and WilyKat came to me and asked me who their parents were and why they were trained so young as Thundercats."

"What did you tell them?"

"The truth, as much as I could tell of it. I said that their mother was a young woman who died shortly after their birth and that their father was someone who loved them but because of circumstances couldn’t raise them. I hoped that would satisfy them, but it didn’t, especially in the case of WilyKit. She became very pushy and emotional—not that I can blame her, I suppose I wouldn’t want to hear vague answers either—but I do remember thinking at the time how she looked almost like she was at her wit’s end. Even WilyKat didn’t seem to be able to calm her down easily or get through to her. It was very unsettling… and it fits something I read about the Birth Hour of Darkness."

"What’s that?" Cheetara asked.

"That they often reach a point where they become so bogged down in their own issues, that they feel so alone, that they will shut out everyone and allow their demons to consume them. We all do it to some extent, of course, as no one likes to deal with their problems, but those born on the hour of Darkness are more likely to isolate themselves emotionally and least likely to be proactive enough to help themselves. More often than not it’s that sort of behavior that allows their negative feelings to consume them and lead them right into the very sort of self-destructive urges that they should fight."

"There must be something we can do," Cheetara argued. "I’m sure we could reach her somehow."

Tygra nodded and reached for a book. He opened to a bookmarked page and read a passage. "I saw something in this book that may be of use to us in getting through to her—when we find her, that is. It says that all ten of the birth hours fall into ‘linked pairs’, of which there are a total of five. Each linked pair has a unique tie to the other that gives an added depth in understanding the other personality. In the case of the Birth Hour of Darkness, that is the Birth Hour of Light. It does say that one born on the Birth Hour of Light is one—and sometimes the only one—that can reach a child of Darkness in his or her pain and keep him or her from giving into those lost, destructive tendencies."

"That’s great," Cheetara said with a note of optimism. "Who do we know that’s born on the Hour of Light?"

Tygra sighed. "That’s the problem. Remember how I said earlier that of the few born on those hours make it to adulthood? It seems to be true. None of us here in Cat’s Lair were born on the Hour of Light. I’m born on the Hour of the Dreamer, and you’re born on the Hour of Empathy along with Snarf. WilyKat was the same as his sister, the Hour of Darkness, and as for the others, Panthro was born on the Hour of Force, Lion-O was born on the Hour of Nobility, Bengali and Snarfer were both born on the Hour of the Builder, Pumyra was born on the hour of Wisdom, and Lynx-O on the hour of Justice. Not one of us was born on the Hour of Light. In fact the only Thundercat of recent times that I found who was born on the Hour of Light was Claudus, but even he had a very late number in it, 826."

"We don’t need this Hour of Light person to reach her, do we?"

"I hope not." Tygra set the book back on the table and got to his feet. He stretched when he stood, as his body reminded him that he’d been in the chair for hours now. Cheetara also stood and pushed her chair back under the council table, and looked back to Tygra when he spoke again. "Unfortunately before we could even apply any of this we’d have to get in touch with her first. Gods, Cheetara, I hope she’s all right over there… the Third Moon of Plundarr is so far away…"

As if on cue, Pumari burst into the room. "Cheetara! Tygra!" the child called excitedly.

"Pumari! What is it?" Tygra asked of the youth.

"You gotta go downstairs now. WilyKit is here! She came home from the Third Moon of Plundarr. Panthro saw her walk up the steps to the lair a few minutes ago. He went to get her and told me and Chet to go find everyone and to have them all go downstairs."

Cheetara and Tygra exchanged glances, then started for the door. "We’re on our way," they said in unison, and hurried with Pumari downstairs.

They arrived at the sitting room in which WilyKit had been taken only moments after the other Thundercats presently in the lair. Snarf was busy pouring the distraught-looking WilyKit a cup of hot tea, while the others were bombarding her with questions and talking all at once. After a few moments of this, Pumyra stepped in front of them and asked them to ease up and go one at a time. Though their curiosity was still burning, they backed off. Pumyra was their healer and as such they respected her opinion when someone's physical health was in question, and given the younger Thundercat's disheveled appearance and the knowledge that she was with child, it was indeed a question on all of their minds.

WilyKit remained silent through all this, and sipped at the tea Snarf handed her before replacing it on the saucer he set out on the coffee table in front of her. Pumyra then spoke up and addressed her gently. "WilyKit, can you tell us what happened?"

"Where’s your brother?" Snarf added.

"Why aren’t you still on the Third Moon of Plundarr?" Panthro also asked.

As the questions began again, she glanced upwards at the concerned faces of her friends, or more accurately, WilyKit’s friends. Torlei, who was still in full control of WilyKit’s body, would hardly call them her friends. "I’m so tired…" she started in a halting, tired-sounding tone that she used with the intent to garner sympathy. "Such a long story…"

"Maybe you should tell us after some rest, then," Pumyra suggested.

Lion-O nodded in agreement. "Yes… but first I have to know where WilyKat, Snarfer, and Leonora are, and why our attempts to contact anyone over there have been failing. We’ve been worried sick about all of you. What happened? Where are they?"

"Still there," she replied. "They might be dead. I don’t know. They wanted to kill them all. They destroyed their home and killed the rulers. I didn’t see WilyKat before I—" Torlei allowed her voice to grow heavy with sadness and confusion, and slumped over in a false fainting spell.

The act worked like a charm. Immediately Pumyra and Snarf were tending to her and trying to wake their beloved WilyKit up. "Kit," Pumyra said, giving her a gentle shake. "Kit, can you hear me?"

"What do you mean, they might be dead?" Lion-O asked with alarm. "Who wanted to kill them all? Who killed the rulers? Are you telling me someone killed Selene and Psiarik?"

That’s exactly what I’m telling you, you idiot, Torlei thought maliciously. Though she honestly didn’t think the pesky twin of her host or that wretched snarf was dead, she was fairly certain that she had offed at least one of the Lunatac leaders and that Mumm-Ra had gotten rid of the lioness. And even if it weren’t actually true yet, it would be soon enough. She and Mumm-Ra would see to that personally. She took a twisted delight in the distraught, shocked, grief-stricken expressions of the Thundercats upon hearing the devastating news.

But, as enjoyable as that was, she was getting bored playing twenty questions with them. What she really wanted, and was impatiently waiting for, was the chance to do some real damage. "Lion-O, I… I’m so tired," she murmured, trying to look as exhausted and pathetic as possible.

"Snarf snarf, I think we should let her get some sleep," Snarf interrupted. "She can tell us what happened after she rests."

"But Snarf, what about the others?"

"Nothing you can do for them now," WilyKit mumbled, and closed her eyes.

"She’s right, there is nothing we can do right now if they’re all the way on the Third Moon of Plundarr. It’s too far and we don’t know enough about what happened to take a risk like that yet," Tygra pointed out sadly. "We should know what we’re dealing with before we jump into anything."

"We don’t even know if WilyKit is rational enough right now to be telling us what’s going on. Look at her, Lion-O," Pumyra pointed out in a hushed tone. "She’s obviously been through something intense."

"We have to do something!" Lion-O protested.

"Well I can see to it that we get a transmission of some sort through to someone over there," Panthro said determinedly. "Even if all we get is a space taxi, I’m going to get in touch with someone who can get me in touch with someone who knows something about what happened."

"Rrrrowl, I’m with you, Panthro," Bengali agreed.

Lion-O sighed. He hated feeling so powerless and worried. "All right. I’ll be up there in a minute too," he said to Bengali and Panthro, who nodded and left for the control room immediately after. As he examined the semi-conscious WilyKit, he had to admit that Pumyra was right. She was a sad sight. Her clothing was tattered and battle-worn, her hair was wild and out of place, and her face showed a lost, haunted, and exhausted expression unlike anything he’d ever seen before. No, she was in no condition to be questioned about anything at present. "Take her to her room," he told Pumyra and Snarf. "I’ll let you know if we find out anything." Lion-O then departed for the control room, with young Pumari at his heels. Pumyra and Snarf eased the tired WilyKit back onto her feet and led her to her bedroom, leaving only Cheetara and Tygra in the sitting room.

"You were very quiet through all that," Tygra remarked after a few moments of thoughtful silence.

"I… I didn’t really know what to say," she answered. "She didn’t even seem like the same WilyKit to me. I don’t know how to explain it, but it… it felt to me almost like we were gathered here talking to a stranger. Like it just wasn’t her."

"She’s been through a lot. It’s no wonder she doesn’t seem like herself."

"It’s more than that. I felt a very… dark feeling about her. More so even than when she first returned after her disappearance. It reminded me of what you described about the Birth Hour of Darkness earlier, and it frightens me. Something is very wrong with her, Tygra. I know it."

"Of course something’s wrong. Her brother is missing, and from what I’ve gathered, she was a lone escapee of some sort of assassination or massacre. Gods… what’s happening?"

Cheetara buried her face in her hand and fought back the urge to let out a frustrated cry. "And why? Or who, for that matter? Who could be capable of such a thing?"

Tygra put a comforting arm around her shoulder. "I don’t know, Cheetara. I guess that’s what we’ll have to find out when WilyKit is strong enough to tell us." He drew her into a friendly hug for a moment, then let her go. "Come on. We should go and help the others. Maybe if we can somehow get to the bottom of this—"

"Yes," she agreed. "I’ll be in my quarters. Maybe if I go where I won’t be distracted and concentrate hard enough, I can use my sixth sense to learn to something."

"Good idea. I guess I’ll be back in the council room. Now more than ever, I think I need to find out all I can about the Birth Hour of Darkness before it’s too late."

Now that she was finally alone and snuggled all cozily in WilyKit’s bed, Torlei let out a giggle of wicked glee. Manipulating these felines was so much more entertaining than she initially expected. The look on Lion-O’s face when she said that she thought WilyKat might be dead was priceless. Not so unshakably heroic now, are you Lion-O, she thought with a nasty smirk. Normally she found games like this to be tedious and a waste of time, but she had to admit there was an element of thrill to it. Besides, toying with them first made the ultimate victory over them that much sweeter.

Once she was certain that the female puma and the snarf were far enough away that they wouldn’t hear her rise, she climbed out of bed and stared in the mirror above WilyKit’s dressing table. A small part of her was startled to see the Thundercat’s form there, for the last time she’d actually witnessed her reflection it had been her natural Lunatac form. The shock wore off quickly, though. She ran a finger through a tangled lock of her host’s red mane. My, she certainly was a mess. No wonder the others were so concerned. How very touching, she thought with a sneer.

After a more careful examination of her reflection, she decided she wanted a shower before doing anything. She’d forgotten about such mortal necessities in the years since her first death, but now that she remembered, she didn’t consider it to be optional. She wondered when the Thundercat’s last shower had been, anyhow. Probably before she and Mumm-Ra had attacked her in the bathroom a few nights earlier, she realized with a grin. The poor Thundercat had been too afraid to be alone for long ever since that. "No, it simply won’t do to kill off my enemies looking like such a slob, now will it?" she said sarcastically to the mirror.

She glanced around the room and saw one door. It turned out to be a closet, so while she was there she thumbed through the Thundercat’s clothes. Clean clothing sounded like a good idea too, though she frowned at most of the selections in WilyKit’s wardrobe. Most of her outfits were brightly colored, tight, and revealing, a look that was hardly the undead Lunatac’s more subdued style of choice. She wondered what WilyKit intended to do once her belly started to swell noticeably from the child she carried. Of course, that didn’t really matter now. Given her personal distaste for bearing a Hunter’s child after her past experience at Demlin’s hands, Torlei decided that she’d make certain that WilyKit and Darkail’s child would die in the womb long before it ever had a chance to be born. Impatiently she continued to rummage through the available choices of clothing, until she settled on a cream-colored two piece outfit that she found to be at least somewhat tasteful. She plucked it from the hanger and stepped into the hallway.

No one was there, which was fine by her. She used WilyKit’s awareness to determine which door was the bathroom, then went inside and locked the door behind her. She stripped out of her dirty clothing and turned on the water in the shower. How many years had it been since she’d been in a shower, anyway, she wondered? Fifteen? Twenty? Pleased by the soothing touch of the warm stream of water, she let her fingers linger for a moment while she tested the temperature. The sensation reminded her that mortal bodies could feel physical things so much more intensely than their ghostly counterparts. The realization was an added incentive to make them all suffer.

Once the temperature was to her liking, she stepped into the shower and embraced the hot rain of water. She was so caught up in imagining how much pain Lion-O would feel while she fried him into a crispy corpse with her powers that she literally jumped when she heard a familiar evil chuckle behind her. Startled, she whirled around and glared at the offender, the nasty look on her face totally incongruous with the WilyKit everyone knew and loved. "Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to barge in on someone in the shower, darling?" she snapped sarcastically at the intruder.

The amused face of Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living leered back at her. "Just enjoying the view, heh heh," he replied, glancing over her curvaceous and bare feline body.

Torlei turned back toward the showerhead and dunked WilyKit’s unruly mane of red and black hair under the direct stream of water. "Why am I not surprised," she muttered.

Still grinning, Mumm-Ra handed her the shampoo. "Oh, we both know you have nothing to hide from me, my bride. Can you blame me for being curious? It has been some time since you’ve had a physical body, you know."

"Yes, thanks to a few individuals whom I’d like to torture into a slow and painful demise," she replied, massaging some of the shampoo into her hair. She winced as a drop of it made its way into her eyes and stung them.

Mumm-Ra stepped closer and caressed the side of her face with his hand. One cold blue finger wiped the offending stream of bubbles aside so she could open her eyes. "Ah yes, I remember that soap stings," he noted. "Unfortunate… but you do seem to be enjoying yourself for the most part, from what I’ve seen."

"From what you’ve seen? Don’t tell me you haven’t done anything this whole time?" she asked, her voice taking on a note of irritability. "We had a plan, Mumm-Ra."

"My dear, I’m hurt," he said sarcastically. "Of course I did my part… I just finished casting a few, heh heh, spells on Cat’s Lair that will sabotage all their communications in and out of the building. It should also wreak havoc with their power grids and equipment shortly. But I didn’t want to set it off immediately, in case you wanted to have some fun first."

"Fun, eh? You mean you want to pull a few ghostly pranks like we did back at the MoonTower? That was a bit childish, but it was entertaining," she mused.

"We could," Mumm-Ra said, his red eyes sparkling with devious intent, "though I had something else in mind." He moved closer to her again, nearly pinning her smaller feline body against the wall underneath the steamy stream of water.

"Like what?"

Just then, elsewhere in the Lair, someone must have flushed a toilet or ran the sink for a moment, because the water went from comfortably hot to ice cold. Torlei let out a loud shriek at the sudden unpleasant chill and sprang back from the shower stream. "When I find out who’s responsible for that, I’m going to tear them limb from limb," she hissed angrily.

Mumm-Ra caught her in his powerful arms and chuckled with amusement. "It would seem you’re sensitive to these mortal sensations, my dear."

"I’ll get used to them. It’s inconvenient, but it is refreshing… I had forgotten just how deeply the mortals can feel pain. It makes inflicting it that much sweeter."

"There is another advantage to it."

"Oh?"

Mumm-Ra licked his lips and eyed her intensely. "They can also feel pleasure. Perhaps you’d like a reminder of that?" he hinted suggestively, and slid one of his hands in a slow caress over her shapely body. "It has been years now, you know…"

A purr started deep within her new feline body in favorable response to his touch. While she had never been thrilled with her dark arrangement to be bound to Mumm-Ra for all eternity, the bonding spell the Ancient Spirits of Evil cast all those years ago did make him attractive to her in a way. Not so much aesthetically, but in a partners-in-crime, linked-soul sort of way. She would have been lying if she had said that she didn’t find the suggestion arousing. She learned shortly after their bonding—on the rare occasion back then that she wasn’t resting or arguing with him—that his skills in pleasure were among the ones that were not just empty egotistical boasts of his prowess. A teasing smile formed on her lips, and she flexed her fingers against his muscular blue chest. "But my dear, you don’t have the advantage of mortal sensation," she pointed out coyly.

Her unexpected agreeability fueled his drive further. "Oh, I’ll manage," he replied with a lecherous grin. Just because he couldn’t feel as strongly as living flesh, it by no means meant that he couldn’t enjoy carnal pleasures.

"And what of our enemies here in Cat’s Lair?" she asked, her eyes widening with growing desire as one of Mumm-Ra’s hands groped at her breast.

"Oh, not to worry… we’ll dispense of them shortly. But for now, my dear…" He finished his sentence by pressing his undead lips to hers in a lusty kiss. Fortunately Torlei didn’t find the overwhelming stench of death and decay that surrounded Mumm-Ra, enhanced tenfold by WilyKit’s mortal senses, to be offensive. She supposed that was something she should thank the Ancient Spirits of Evil for, as the dead mage’s mouth invaded and devoured hers in dark passion, and he eased the both of them to the floor of the tub. A short while later, while she gasped and moaned in wicked pleasure beneath the writhing body of her evil mate, she thanked them for a few more things as well.

Some time later, Torlei emerged from the bathroom wearing the cream-colored outfit she’d selected and a devious smile, which originated partly from the afterglow of her lusty break with Mumm-Ra, and partly from the anticipation of the wicked havoc she was about to wreak. She cast her gaze up and down each direction of the corridor and thought about where she might begin. Without a reason to choose otherwise, she randomly chose left, and strolled down the hall.

At first she saw nothing of interest. Most of the doors were shut and many were locked. She didn’t think there was anything of real importance to her behind them, so she moved on for easier targets. It was then that she spied a door, slightly ajar, at the end of the hallway. Intrigued, she walked over and peered in. What she saw made her grin with delight. It was the perfect target… a young Thunderian boy.

Had she cared enough to take notice, she might have recognized him. He was a child with whom she’d crossed paths with many years ago, during the Battle of the Swords. Back then Chet had been but a toddler, and a pesky one at that. Now he had grown into a seven-year-old, tall for his age, with long and skinny golden-furred, spotted limbs and an unruly mane of red hair.

Chet was sitting on the floor, acting out an imaginary battle scene with about ten different plastic action figures. He had a green monster in one hand fighting with a felinoid-shaped warrior in the other. Predictably, the warrior-cat was winning. "Typical," muttered Torlei. "Seems they indoctrinate that ‘good wins over evil monsters’ philosophy in their cubs young."

Her quiet mumbling from the doorway caught Chet’s attention. He looked up, startled. "Hi WilyKit," he said. "Are you feeling better? Mom said you were sick."

"I’m feeling much better now," Torlei answered with false sweetness. She took his greeting as an invitation to walk into the room. She inwardly shuddered at the bright, cheery décor of his playroom. Pastels. Disgusting. "What have you got there?" she asked, now standing directly over him.

Chet didn’t understand why, but WilyKit’s presence made him feel threatened. The boy shifted nervously and looked up at her. "Just toys. The Thunder-Warriors are kicking the alien’s butt!"

"So they are," she remarked. "You like ‘kicking butt’, don’t you?" she questioned.

"Yeah, I’m gonna be a Thundercat someday like you and Dad and Mom. I can’t wait to use the Sword of Omens!"

Torlei struggled not to show her distaste at that thought. "Oh I’m sure you will." So the boy was Lion-O’s cub, she realized. She scanned WilyKit’s awareness for a quick confirmation and learned that Chet was his name. Ah yes, she thought, Chet. The brat I took to the pyramid all those years ago. Oh, I definitely should have killed him when I had the chance, she lamented. There was a bright spot to it though. The fact that he was Lion-O and Cheetara’s cub and one who had made himself a pest to her in the past made him a wonderful first target. An evil smile spread slowly across her lips as she knelt beside him and reached for his arm. Chet instinctively backed away, overwhelmed with that same bad feeling he had when she first walked in. She was faster than he, however, and grabbed his forearm in a grip of iron. "Are you afraid of me?"

"N-no," he answered shakily. "What do you want WilyKit?"

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," she answered, her eyes sparkling with cruel intent. "What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?" Her voice was laced with subtle threat as she posed the question.

Chet squirmed in her grasp and tried to break free. "Leggo," he said, his fear of her growing by the second.

Torlei showed a displeased frown on WilyKit’s face and tightened her grip on the cub’s arm. "You’re being very rude, Chet."

"You’re-you’re hurting me!" he whimpered in a panic. "Stop!"

"And giving orders too… how insolent," she snapped. She stood back up and, still holding him by the arm, yanked him off the floor roughly, making him cry out. "I think you need to be taught to respect your elders." She then raised WilyKit’s free hand, which was now sparking with her own telekinetic powers.

The terrified boy let out a shrill shriek. "Mommy!"

"Oh no you don’t," hissed Torlei. Immediately she threw Chet to the floor and shocked him with her energy. The surge was enough to stun him silent for a moment, and she used that time to her advantage by pinning him underneath the weight of a telekinetic force field so that he couldn’t move and could barely breathe. She felt an evil rush of pleasure seeing the child gasp for every precious breath of air. "Call for your mommy now, brat," she snarled. "I’ll be back to finish you after I’ve taken care of the important ones. If you haven’t choked to death by then, that is."

With that she left the room and shut the door behind her. Once she was back out in the hallway, she decided to take no chances that he might be found, and electrified the door with her sinister energy. "Someone will have fun trying to break through that," she remarked to no one in particular, getting an entertaining visualization of one of the cats electrocuting themselves to try and save poor sweet little Chet. Satisfied for the moment, she then calmly descended the stairs, looking for victim number two.

Cheetara lay quietly in the center of her bed, her body still and her eyes closed, but deep in concentration. Even though she could work better with it than she did years ago, she still could not fully control her sixth sense. She hoped that now, when she really needed it, that it wouldn’t let her down.

Her thoughts concentrated on WilyKit. She thought questions, full of emotion and need, in the hopes that somehow she would learn an answer. She asked the faceless void behind her closed eyes what had happened to WilyKit in her absence—both absences—that had resulted in the wreck of a Thundercat that turned up on the doorstep earlier that evening. She then pleaded for answers as to where WilyKat was, and where Snarfer was. She asked for an answer to the question of why no one on the Third Moon of Plundarr could be reached. And when no answer came directly to those questions, she asked them over and over again.

She had almost given up when suddenly she a powerful vision formed out of nowhere. It was similar to what she saw in the brief flash she had earlier. She could see WilyKit, trapped in a place that seemed a world away, screaming in tormented agony. Her pain was not physical, but emotional, and she seemed inconsolable in her anguish. Only this time the vision didn’t end there. Cheetara could see WilyKit in far more vivid detail now. She could see that her face was stained with tears and she looked even more desperately lost than the WilyKit she had seen downstairs earlier. Cheetara then saw that her younger friend was not alone like she had been in the previous flash. This time she was being held—much like the way one might console a child after a bad nightmare—and comforted by a Lunatac, who Cheetara recognized with some surprise as Psiarik. Before she had the chance to question why he might be there, she saw something that made her blood run cold. Standing above them were two wicked spirits—souls of Lunatacs she didn’t recognize—and in the middle, holding a large spiked mace and poised to strike, was none other than Grune the Destroyer.

Cheetara sat up on her bed with a start. "Grune…" she whispered, her heart still pounding from the sinister vision. Why had she seen him? Did that mean that somehow this did have something to do with the Hour of Darkness? And why was she seeing WilyKit, when she was now home safe and sound in Cat’s Lair?

Not sure what to make of the vision, Cheetara sighed and lay back down on the covers. Maybe it wasn’t her sixth sense at all, and just some strange dream or projection of what Tygra told her earlier. Either way, it didn’t give her the answers she was looking for. She would have to try again. She closed her eyes and cleared her head of all thoughts once more. This time I’ll focus on WilyKat, she decided, hoping to avoid getting another symbolic-type vision.

WilyKat, where are you? Are you safe?

Nothing.

WilyKat, she called with her mind, emotion pouring into every syllable of the mental summons. WilyKat!

Again silence and darkness greeted her. She was almost ready to give up when a vision of the interior of a ship in transit in deep space took form, though at first it was distant and fuzzy and hard to understand. Slowly it gained enough detail for her to recognize that she was looking at the inside of the Feliner II. WilyKat was seated at the controls, his broken arm resting on the armrest of the control chair while he used his good arm to work the piloting controls. She noticed that his injury needed tending. The cast and sling were in tatters, and when she could see more of him, she noticed that his clothing was rumpled and dirty as though he’d been wearing it since some battle and hadn’t had a chance to change. His face, looking far older than his age of thirty-some years, was heavily worn with lines of worry, and he looked like he desperately needed some sleep. Cheetara knew he wanted to rest, but refused to sacrifice even a second of travel time in order to indulge in any. While the Feliner II had autopilot, it would not operate at the highest speeds for safety reasons. Only a live pilot could safely control the craft at maximum speed, so Panthro had programmed the autopilot accordingly. WilyKat was cursing that fact now, but he had no choice… he had to get back to Thundera as fast as possible, and if that meant he’d have to delay sleeping for a while, that’s what he would do. And somehow, seeing him thousands of miles away with her sixth sense, Cheetara knew he was thinking just that.

Searching for more in her vision, she saw the two others she had worried about—Leonora and Snarfer. The lioness was sleeping in the passenger chair. She looked even worse than WilyKat. Her clothing was charred like she’d been somehow burnt, but her flesh was unmarred save for a few scrapes and bruises. Her hand weakly clutched at the Staff of Dera in her lap, and the expression on her face showed that whatever dreams she had, they were uneasy and unpleasant.

Snarfer seemed to have fared the best of the three of them. He was asleep on another seat, and apparently escaped whatever had happened to them relatively unscathed. For that she was grateful, and she was certain that Snarf would be too, when she passed on the news that his nephew was safe.

But what happened to send you fleeing for home so fast? Cheetara asked of her vision.

WilyKat’s head nodded as he fought back another wave of fatigue. He jerked his head up and shook it, trying desperately to keep his eyes open. "Damn you, Mumm-Ra," he mumbled under his breath. "And damn you Torlei for what you’ve done to my sister and my friends… I’ll see you both burn in the pit for this."

Mumm-Ra? Cheetara wondered. Torlei? But they’re banished and gone…

"I’ll get my sister back. You won’t destroy Cat’s Lair too," WilyKat mumbled aloud and with a cold determination. His angry thoughts were spoken for no real reason other than he needed to hear something to keep him going and keep him awake on the long flight. It was amazing what strength the raw emotion of anger could give. Had he had the chance to think more clearly, he might have pondered if that was why Mumm-Ra always had the power he did. But WilyKat was not in the state for such abstract thinking.

Get her back? But she’s home, WilyKat, home and safe.

Or is she? Still within this vision, Cheetara got another flash of the vengeful face of Grune the Destroyer, poised to strike at WilyKit.

Cheetara was about to explore her vision further, when a loud and terrified scream from the physical realm snapped her out of her trance altogether and brought her crashing back into reality with a start. It wasn’t so much by choice, but by loving instinct, for the screams were coming from someone she held very dear. "Chet!" she exclaimed.

The cheetah leapt out of bed and was literally down the hall to her young son’s room in a flash.

The first thing she noticed was the sinister glow about the door. It sparked with energy like it was on fire, and she could hear a muffled sort of whimpering inside. Had she arrived five seconds earlier she would have noticed the figure of WilyKit retreating down the nearest staircase, but her concern for her son was her first priority.

Without hesitation she reached for the doorknob. Immediately she received a painful shock that made her cry out with its intensity and nearly knocked her over. She looked at the door in a panic, knowing that Chet was in danger behind it, but the entire door was aflame with the sinister energy. "Chet!" she shouted. "Are you all right! Chet! Answer me!"

No answer.

"Chet!"

That time she heard a small whimper but little more.

"CHET!"

Another noise, this one even more strained and faint than the last, came from inside the room and then there was silence.

Dead silence.

Cheetara then made the decision that any mother would make. Completely disregarding her own safety, she used all of her strength and speed and charged toward the door intent on breaking it down. In a flurry of golden light she made contact with the sparking energy barrier, but instead of giving way, it drew her in like quicksand and consumed her. She let out an agonized scream and wrenched in pain as an incredible burning raced through every limb of her body before she crossed her threshold of pain, slumped to the floor, and the world went black.

Unaware of Cheetara’s distress on the other side of the Lair, Tygra continued to read the Star Scrolls with increasing frustration. He clenched his fist, crumpling the paper slightly, and looked away. Who am I fooling? I don’t know enough about this to make it help us. I’m not a star reader like Sibera was. If only she were still here to help…

"‘If only’ is a useless phrase, Tygra, didn’t Jaga tell you that, snarf snarf?" a female snarfen voice sounded from behind him.

Alarmed by the familiar but out-of-place voice, Tygra whirled around and saw the age-worn whiskered face of his old friend Snarf Clarece once more. Egbert’s words about her after he’d last seen her played back in his mind.

"Rowr, Tygra, Snarf Clarece died almost two years ago."

"Clarece," Tygra said softly. "But—"

"Yes, I’m dead, and you’re talking to a ghost," the old snarf said matter-of-factly. "Lion-O does it all the time, snarf snarf. But that’s not the main issue here, now is it? You’ve got more important things on your mind?"

"I…" he stammered, not really knowing what to make of talking to a spirit, "…well… yes. It’s WilyKit," he finished. Strange, wasn’t I thinking about WilyKit the last time I saw Clarece?

"She is in pain. Dark trouble, snarf snarf. Her own evil is trying to take her over. You know of the Hour of Darkness now. You know how serious it is… and you can save her before it’s too late. Before she winds up like Grune the Destroyer."

"I can save her? But how? The scrolls said that one born on the Hour of Light has the best chance of reaching her. I’m not one. I’m only a Dreamer, according to these scrolls. How can I—"

"Snarf, snarf, snarf," Clarece sighed impatiently, and shook her head. "You are a Dreamer, Tygra, and that’s exactly what’s hindering you," the snarf pointed out. "Even now with all of your accomplishments you’ve made in your life, there’s still that part of you that doesn’t believe that you’re good enough. Dreamers are blessed with the most brilliant, powerful, and inventive minds of any hour, and they can do anything if they put their minds to it. But unlike the other hours they never really believe deep down that they can. They spend their lives either trying to prove themselves or hiding behind excuses, or in your case, escaping from it all by looking for answers in the wrong places—whether it’s a fruit, a crystal, or in this case, a worn old piece of paper filled with information that you don’t really understand."

Tygra looked down, feeling the sting of truth in Clarece’s words. Hadn’t he said to Cheetara earlier that he felt guilty isolating himself in here? Had he really come here truly believing he’d find an answer, or had he come here so he wouldn’t have to be part of the shared panic and worry with the others?

Clarece padded over next to him and laid a furry paw on him. Surprisingly her ghostly form was solid and he could feel warmth in her touch. "Don’t get me wrong, Tygra. I’m not here to lecture you, snarf snarf. I just want you to understand that you don’t need to drive yourself crazy searching for answers here. You’ve found out all you need to know already. You know that WilyKit’s Birth Hour of Darkness is at the root of her troubles. And yes, you now know that a Child of Light is one who has the best chance of reaching her. But I’m here to tell you that the Light she needs is with her already, and he alone cannot save her. Only she herself can truly save her."

Tygra pondered her words for a moment. "But if only she can save herself, then what can I do? I thought you said I could save her. I don’t understand."

"She must save herself by wanting to be saved. And she does. I know it and I know you know it that she is not evil in her heart. But her heart is weighted down by troubles that have made her think and do things that are evil, and a force far more malevolent than any, snarf, Birth Hour of Darkness has taken hold of her. The WilyKit you see is not her. Her true soul lies locked in a realm of evil. She can be saved, but she will never have the strength to do it unless you and the others drive out the evil controlling her. That you can do, Tygra. Drive out the evil that possesses her, and she will find her way back to you."

Clarece paused for a moment. Her eyes closed momentarily, and an expression of grave sadness crossed her tired old face. "Brrrr…. I can not stay with you any longer, Tygra. Things grow dark and dire. Our friends need our help. I must do what I can, and now so must you."

"But Clarece—"

He had barely gotten the words out when she abruptly stepped back and faded. Before Tygra had the chance to reach for her, she had already disappeared entirely from where she stood, leaving no trace that she had ever really been there to begin with.

Tygra exhaled, not even realizing until this moment how tense his body had been during their conversation, and tried to sort out all that she had said to him and make sense of it. I have to drive out the evil that possesses her… what evil is that?

His thoughts were cut off when he heard the scream.

"Cheetara!" he exclaimed aloud, even though he was now quite alone in the room. He had immediately recognized it as her and his heart froze with fear when he heard the sound of sheer pain within her cry. Immediately he sprang from his chair and ran for the door. The conversation with Clarece temporarily forgotten, Tygra raced through the halls of Cat’s Lair in a maddened rush and prayed in the name of the gods of Thundera that he would make it to Cheetara in time.

In another, much quieter part of the Lair, Torlei found herself standing in front of a prominent door. It was made of thick steel, like much of Cat’s Lair, and painted a shimmery whitish-blue metallic color, and in the center of the door was a carefully hand-painted and beautifully drawn Thundercat symbol. She saw that the passage had a keypad lock on it, which was a higher level of security than she had noticed in other areas of the Lair. "Must be something important behind this one," she mused. "I think it’s time for a little breaking and entering."

Torlei took a few steps back and surveyed the door, undecided between whether or not to try and open it or to simply blast it open. Blasting of course would be more fun, but figured it might be counterproductive at the moment, so she held back, and instead laid her fingers on the keypad. She focused for a moment and scanned the awareness of her Thundercat host body for the right combination. After a few moments it came to her. "Nine… two… three… seven… five," she murmured aloud as she punched in the code. The keypad beeped in confirmation, then the sound of a heavy lock unlatching could be heard, and the doors swung open.

A wide and malevolent grin spread across Torlei’s false Thundercat face when she saw what lay behind the door. It was a darkened chamber and mostly empty, except for a large and elaborate metal stand in the very center of the room that was lighted by the soft glow of a spotlight from above. Upon the stand rested a sword. "The Sword of Omens," she said quietly. "So this is where it’s kept. Oh yes, I’m definitely glad I checked what was behind door number one."

She strode quickly to the stand and eyed the sword up close. She had never really seen the mythical sword except when Lion-O had used it against her and when he had used it to forge the Mighty Sword along with Selene and Ratar-O that other time. Her eyes shone with a dark hatred at that memory. He would pay for presuming to try and banish her and Mumm-Ra like that. When she and her partner were finished with him, he’d wish that she let him off as relatively easy as they’d left the Lunar Plundarrian rulers. And to ensure that he wouldn’t try any sword magic against her this time, she intended to dispose of that wretched Sword of Omens once and for all.

She extended her hand toward the handle of the blade.

Just as her fingers made contact with the metal, the Eye of Thundera glowed brightly. A sound similar to a growl of warning came from the sword and a shock just as violent as any of her own surged up the entire length of her arm, forcing her to drop it. She wrenched her arm away, cursing the weapon, and glared at it with utmost contempt. "So it knows I bear it ill will…how very inconvenient," she snarled. "In that case, I’ll just have to make sure no one else can get to it, then." Torlei then turned on her heels and stormed out of the sword chamber. When the door slid shut behind her, her calm façade abruptly vanished. She whirled around and struck her fist in the direction of the lock keypad. Instantly the device exploded like it had been smashed with a sledgehammer, even though she never actually touched it. The undead Lunatac admired her work and smiled briefly. Telekinesis was so convenient. Convenient enough that she vented her anger by repeating the blows onto the door and the walls, twisting the metal and leaving large, ugly dents as evidence of her frustration.

When her temper cooled, she evaluated the damage and frowned. Though the door was destroyed and would need extensive repair before it could be opened again, she knew that was no guarantee that Lion-O wouldn’t be able to get his sword out of the chamber. She frowned for a moment, then cast an energy field over the door and each of the room’s walls, just like she had to Chet’s room upstairs. It would entrap and shock anything it came in contact with. The mental image of the Sword of Omens frying was a pleasing one, and the image of a frustrated Lion-O being shocked senseless as he tried to force his way in was an even better one. She wondered if his hair would get even bigger in such a circumstance, and giggled nastily.

That taken care of, she started down the hall again.

"What on Thundera is all that racket?" Bengali said, looking up from the control panel.

Lion-O was on his feet in an instant. "I don’t know. But I’m going to find out."

"Maybe we should go with you," Snoelle suggested.

"No," Lion-O said, shaking his head. "You and Panthro should keep trying to get through to the Third Moon of Plundarr. We have to find out what happened over there. If we need your help we’ll call."

"It’s probably nothing anyway," Bengali said, sounding far more sure of his words than he actually was.

"Let’s hope so," Panthro replied, and turned back around to face the screen.

"Cheetara! Oh, gods, NO!" Tygra cried, as he rushed to Cheetara’s side. The cheetah was unconscious, and the terrible odor of burnt fur filled the air. He saw the energy field around the door and realized that was what must have harmed Cheetara, but paid it little attention as his main concern was waking her at the moment. He knelt beside her and shook her gently. "Cheetara, please wake up."

Snarf came bounding around the corner. "Snarf! I heard shouting out here! What—rowr! What happened, Tygra?"

"I don’t know, Snarf," he answered worriedly. "She must have been shocked by whatever that is," he said, pointing to the door.

"Sna-a-arf! What is that?"

"I don’t know!" He lifted Cheetara’s head and cradled it in his lap. "Please wake up," he urged her softly. Snarf also moved closer and gave her a hard nudge.

Fortunately it was enough. Cheetara groaned softly and stirred. She opened her eyes and focused on Tygra. "Tygra? What… what hit me?"

"That," Snarf said, pointing to the electrified door with his tail.

Instantly Cheetara remembered what had happened, and she sat up. "Chet’s in there. He’s hurt! We have to get him out!"

"Wait! We have to figure out what that is before we try breaking through it, otherwise one of us is going to wind up knocked out again. Or worse."

Cheetara got to her feet, wincing a bit with some residual pain from the shock. "Tygra, that’s my cub trapped in that room. Something attacked him. I felt it with my sixth sense. I have to get in there and make sure he’s all right, and if it takes me breaking that door down, I will do it."

"But who attacked him?" Snarf asked. "Not just anyone can get in the lair."

Clarece’s words about WilyKit echoed in Tygra’s head. "Drive out the evil that possesses her."

"No," he mumbled softly. "She wouldn’t do that... she couldn’t…"

"What?" Cheetara looked over at Tygra.

"Who?" Snarf asked.

"Never mind," Tygra replied, pushing that disturbing thought aside for the moment. "Cheetara was right, we have to get Chet out of there." And find out who did attack him, he added silently. And pray that it wasn’t WilyKit. But now he was not so sure that it wasn’t.

Snarf bounced up on his tail and eyed the glowing field covering the door. "But how?"

Tygra thought for a moment. "We have to somehow drain that field. If we can put something in its way to draw out the energy, we might be able to weaken it enough for us to break open and allow someone fast to pass through.

"I’ll run through," Cheetara said.

"Cheetara—" Tygra started.

"No, Tygra," she cut him off. "I’m all right, and I am the fastest of all of us. Besides, I’ve already experienced how that energy field works. It’s like a net in a way, the longer you’re in it, the more it works to keep you tangled in it. But if you two can divert the energy enough, I can run through and get Chet, and then run back through."

"All right then," Tygra agreed. He glanced into one of the other open rooms in the hallway for an idea of how to draw the energy. He saw some blankets on a guest bed, and got an idea. He ran in and motioned for Snarf to follow. "Snarf, I want you to tear all the bedding off this bed. You’re going to throw it onto that energy field piece by piece to draw its energy."

Immediately Snarf began stripping the bed. "Okay, Tygra."

"And while you do that, I’m going to reach into the field and open the door. I’m going to get shocked, but at the same time, I’ll draw a lot of the energy away… and that’s when you run through and get to Chet," he said to Cheetara.

Cheetara nodded. "I’m ready when you two are."

Snarf dragged a wad of blankets and sheets into the hallway. "Rowr, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be."

Tygra fixed his eyes on the door and prepared himself. "Now then, Snarf."

Snarf let out a nervous whine, but balled up the first of the blankets right into the field. Instantly the entire area blazed and crackled with the evil energy, glowing most brightly around the invading object. Tygra took a deep breath and thrust his hand into the orange-yellow glow and grasped the doorknob. A painful shocking sensation tore into him like a thousand daggers at once, making his every hair stand on end and his skin feel like it was on fire. It was all he could do to make himself turn the knob, but somehow he managed to find the strength to do it, and the door clicked open. Not wasting a second, Cheetara broke into a full run and charged through the weakened barrier. It stung, but she didn’t let herself get concerned with that. Almost as soon as she was through, the weakened Tygra pulled back and fell to the floor, gasping for breath as he tried to recover.

Once inside it took only seconds for Cheetara to spot Chet. He lay on the floor gasping desperately for each breath. It was almost like he was pinned under some great weight that she could not see. She bent over him and tried to pick him up, but it felt like he’d suddenly gained a hundred pounds in weight. There’s a force field over him too, she realized with rising panic. She knew of only one individual who had a power like that, and who would be vicious enough to use it on a child. Torlei. Or more specifically, Torlei and Mumm-Ra, together. Just like WilyKat had said in her vision…

So they are behind this, and behind what happened to the twins and everyone on the Third Moon. The realization was a dreadful one, but not unexpected. She’d learned long ago not to underestimate Mumm-Ra.

She then took a deep breath, took hold of Chet, and lifted with all her remaining strength. It felt more like she was moving a truckload of bricks than her cub, but somehow she managed to pull him out from underneath the telekinetic weight field. When he was free of the invisible hold he came sailing into her arms, knocking both of them onto the floor. Chet took several deep gasps of air while the relieved Cheetara held him and stroked his mane. "Chet… who did this? Did you see?"

The boy wiped the tears of panic out of his eyes and met those of his mother. "It was WilyKit."

Lion-O and Bengali both gasped in shock when they rounded the corner and saw the mess made of the hallway around the sword chamber.

"Great Jaga!" Lion-O exclaimed. "Who did this?"

"Rowl, or what did this?" Bengali said. "Something big."

"And powerful." Lion-O eyed the force field covering the door and walls with rising dead. "If I didn’t know better, I’d say it reminds me of one of Mumm-Ra’s spells."

"But Mumm-Ra’s gone."

Lion-O sighed. "We’ve thought that before and been wrong. And if this is his doing…"

Mumm-Ra’s voice filled the hallway, though the devil-priest himself was nowhere to be seen. "Then you’re all doomed!"

Bengali growled angrily and swung his fist at the air. "So it is you! Show yourself, you coward!"

The only response to the tiger’s challenge was the all-too-familiar sound of Mumm-Ra’s maniacal laughter echoing throughout the hallway, mocking them.

"I’ll give you something to laugh about, Mumm-Ra," Lion-O growled angrily. "Sword of Omens, come to my hand!"

Nothing happened.

Lion-O fought back a bad feeling and said it a bit louder. "Sword of Omens," he nearly shouted, "Come to my hand! I, Lion-O, Lord of the Thundercats, command you!"

Still nothing.

"Lost your sword, Lion-O?" Mumm-Ra sneered. "That’s too bad… it would have worked nicely as a flashlight…EYEEAAHAAAAHAAAAAA!!!"

Lion-O and Bengali exchanged puzzled looks. "Flashlight?" Lion-O murmured.

And then, all throughout Cat’s Lair, the lights and power went out.

"Damn!" Panthro swore, slamming his hand onto the console.

"What happened?" Snoelle asked, whirling around in her seat to face the others in the darkness.

Pumyra was out of her seat in a flash and at the light switch. She flipped it several times fruitlessly. "The power’s out," she said, stating the obvious.

"Why?" Panthro demanded, his tone getting short. He still hadn’t been able to reach anyone over on the Third Moon of Plundarr, and he’d been trying all the channels he knew. All he got was static or interference. "What in blazes is going on?"

Snoelle stood, frowning. "This isn’t good… we can’t hear anything on the intercom with the power out, either, and there was that big—whatever—a few minutes ago that Lion-O and Bengali went to investigate. They might need our help."

"You’re right Snoelle. We should get our weapons," Panthro agreed.

Pumyra sighed. "It’s been a long time since we needed those."

"It doesn’t hurt to be prepared though. Come on," Snoelle said, heading out into the darkened hallway. Panthro and Pumyra followed closely behind.

Torlei was walking down another one of Cat’s Lair’s corridors when the power went out. She stopped mid-stride and looked around, searching for the presence of her partner in crime. Invisible, but not undetectable to her, she sensed him behind her. "Darling, is this your handiwork?" she whispered.

"But of course it is, my dear," Mumm-Ra replied with a cackle. "I thought you might like to play in the dark."

"Yes. It adds an extra element of fear. Though I doubt Thundercats are afraid of the dark. Except for perhaps the small ones…" her voice trailed off as she caught sight of a female child in the kitchen. She searched WilyKit’s awareness for that one’s name. Pumari. "Like that one."

"I’ll leave you to take care of her then… while I go and bring down the house on Lion-O and his miserable friends like I did to those wretched Lunatacs back on the Third Moon of Plundarr."

Torlei chuckled mischievously. "Don’t have too much fun without me."

"Wouldn’t dream of it," Mumm-Ra replied, right before he gave her shoulder a somewhat lewd squeeze, and vanished entirely.

She then went into the kitchen. Even in the darkness of the power outage, she could still see clearly, thanks the magic of the ancients. She remained silent and idly looked around, until her eyes fell on a wooden block full of large, sharp knives. She strode over to the counter and slid her fingers along the handle of one. Now this was something with potential if the right opportunity arose…

"WilyKit? What are you doing? I thought you were in bed. And why’d the power go out? Is anyone fixing it?"

The voice of ten-year-old Pumari caught her off guard. She turned abruptly as the child rattled off her list of questions and pulled a large butcher knife from the block. The silvery blade was cool in her hands and temptingly sharp. Slowly she advanced toward the child, caressing the knife in her fingers. "I woke up," she said, assuming the more friendly tone of voice that "WilyKit" would speak in. Why is it that all the Thunderbrats flock to me like fleas to a mutant, anyway? Torlei wondered with some annoyance.

"Oh. But why’d the power go out?" Pumari persisted, nibbling on a candyfruit macaroon she just helped herself to. "It’s kinda spooky in here."

A cruel, dangerous smile spread across WilyKit’s features as Torlei advanced toward Pumari with the knife. "Are you afraid of what’s in the shadows, Pumari?"

Pumari shivered, even though the room wasn’t cold. "No," she answered, faking bravery she didn’t feel at the moment. "Thundercats aren’t afraid."

"Of course." WilyKit’s voice was deceptively soft and innocent as she approached.

Instinctively Pumari backed away. "WilyKit, what are you doing?"

"Come to me, Pumari. It’ll be all right."

"What are you doing?" she repeated. "What are you holding?"

"It’s a surprise," she answered with false sweetness. "Come here and see."

Pumari took another step backward. "But… but what is—?"

"Something you really deserve, dear child." Torlei raised the knife, poised to strike.

Just then, Panthro, Pumyra, and Snoelle stepped in the doorway. Pumyra shined a flashlight into the room when she heard the voices, and instead caught the ominous flash of the sharp steel about to plunge into Pumari’s neck. Pumari also saw the gleam of metal, as well as the maniacal, evil look on WilyKit’s face, and let out an earsplitting shriek of terror.

Angered that she lost her element of surprise, Torlei snarled and slashed the blade in the child’s direction.

Pumyra didn’t take any time to think as to why WilyKit would do such a thing, she simply acted. She ran forward and leapt in front of the blade, pushing Pumari out of the way before her child could be hit. The knife slashed a deep wound into her forearm, but it she didn’t even feel it. Panthro was on WilyKit in a flash. He made a flying tackle and pinned her to the ground, forcing the knife out of her hand. She snarled and fought beneath the powerful panther, but he was mightier in body and she couldn’t get him off. "WilyKit!" he shouted. "What in the name of Jaga were you thinking?"

Ever practical, Snoelle retrieved the knife before the enraged WilyKit could get it again. She saw that Pumyra was bleeding badly, her arm coated in a stream of crimson fluid, and handed her a cloth dish towel to wrap it in. Pumari was leaning against her mother crying, and all eyes were on WilyKit and Panthro, who were wrestling on the ground.

"Get off of me, subcreature," the redheaded Thundercat was snarling in a voice so full of hate and rage it did not even sound like her own.

Panthro struggled to keep her pinned to the floor. When had she gotten so strong that she was able to put up this much of a fight against a mighty panther like himself anyway, he wondered. "Not until you tell me why you tried to hurt Pumari. What’s going on with you, WilyKit? Why would you even think of such a thing?" he demanded angrily.

Unable to resist physically, Torlei called on her telekinetic powers to throw Panthro off. The panther reeled like he’d been struck in the gut and fell back, stunned. Instantly Snoelle made a lunge for her, but Torlei managed to scramble to her feet before the snow leopard could get close enough. "Oh no you don’t, you spotted bitch." A heavy canister of flour then flew off the shelf and went sailing toward Snoelle’s head. She caught the motion out of the corner of her eye and ducked, and let out a gasp as it crashed into the wall and sent a spray of white powder into the air.

Snoelle coughed after inadvertently inhaling some, and stared at WilyKit in shock. "What’s happened to you?"

"What’s the matter? Can’t understand why dear, sweet WilyKit is acting this way, hmm?"

"No we can’t," Pumyra shouted, tears of anger glistening in her eyes. "What the hell’s come over you?"

Torlei took a step back to better survey the chaos she’d started. The distraught and confused faces of the Thundercats were just as delicious as the ones on the Lunatacs’ had been, back on the Third Moon. She let out a dark chuckle. "You Thundercats are so naïve. Do you really think that the girl’s blood would have been the first on her hands? Do you know what your beloved WilyKit did during her disappearance, when she was on the Third Moon of Plundarr the first time around?"

Snoelle knew she shouldn’t encourage her tirade, but she wanted to hear the answer. Perhaps that’s what WilyKit needed to snap out of her psychotic episode, she reasoned. "What?"

"You are such fools and hypocrites," Torlei said. "Grune had your number all along. You stand here spouting your words of comfort and concern for your poor dear WilyKit, but the truth is that you don’t want to know what she’s done or why, because the truth would shatter your happy little image of her and yourselves into a thousand pieces."

Snoelle frowned. Why does she keep referring to herself in third person?

"That’s not true," Panthro argued, stepping forward. "That’s not the WilyKit I know and I won’t hear it. We love you, WilyKit, we’ve never wanted to do anything but help you."

"Help? Help?" WilyKit screamed. "It’s too late for help, Panthro! Maybe you should have thought about helping when she disappeared."

"WilyKit, we did try to help you!" Snoelle exclaimed. "You don’t know how many endless days we spent searching for you after you vanished. You didn’t see how many nights your brother—"

"Fuck him!" the possessed WilyKit screamed hatefully. Given her feelings toward her own brother, the subject was a touchy enough one for Torlei as it was, and in her enraged state it only added fuel to her psychotic fury. "Where the hell was he when WilyKit needed him? He was sitting on his ass thinking about that lion bitch of his, that’s what!"

"WilyKit, please calm down," Snoelle said gently. "WilyKat loves you. You know that. We all know that. How can you stand there and say these things? Gods, what’s happened to you?"

A vicious knowing grin spread across WilyKit’s face. "Silly snow leopard… I bet if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me."

"Try us," Panthro challenged. "Look at us, WilyKit, we’re not the enemy. We’re your friends. We’re your fellow Thundercats. No matter what’s happened, we can get through it."

Through WilyKit’s wild, haunted eyes, Torlei surveyed the faces of the Thundercats in front of her, taking cruel delight in the shock and hurt on their faces. "Can we really?" she mocked. "After your dear WilyKit tried to slice that little brat to ribbons?" she snarled, pointing at Pumari. "Or what about her tawdry little affair with the Hunter, where she let him seduce her and have his way with her, can you accept that? Or the little half-breed cub she carries right now, one whose very existence will serve only to remind all of you of this very moment, and the other disgusting truth which she went through all the trouble of faking a memory loss to hide in the first place?"

"Faking…" Pumyra gasped. "You were… faking… that?" Her lip trembled as she pondered the implications of that, and she tightened her protective grip on Pumari. After the too-close brush with the knife, her maternal instincts were overriding her Thundercat sense of fairness and forgiveness. "How could you do that to us?"

Torlei painted an exaggerated apologetic pout on WilyKit’s face. "Perhaps ‘faked’ isn’t the right word for it… but she did feel so guilty about going on the Hunt that she had a Lunatac hypnotist—a dear, close friend of her lover’s and ironically, one you all know quite well—make her forget her troubles."

"Hypnotist?" murmured Snoelle.

"Who? Alluro?" Panthro asked, clearly baffled. Alluro was the only Lunatac hypnotist he knew by name. "But… that can’t be. We asked them on the Third Moon… if Alluro had done it, Selene would have told us."

At that, Torlei burst out laughing. "And Lunatacs always tell the truth, don’t they?" she sneered. Of course, Selene had told them the truth as best she knew it, but adding that extra sting of betrayal to their emotional upheaval was too wickedly delightful an opportunity to pass up.

Pumyra glared at her. "How could you do this to us?"

"Quite easily," she replied, her own tone icy and emotionless. "Once you’ve bashed someone’s brains in and committed cold-blooded murder, it’s amazing how trivial a lie or a rationalization seems after that."

"No," Panthro argued stubbornly. "Our WilyKit would never—could never—do something like that. If she ever killed anyone, it would only be in self-defense or as a casualty of battle."

Torlei’s eyes sparkled with gleeful hatred. "I can see how desperately you’d like to believe that. But sorry, Panthro, you’re wrong. Dead wrong," she laughed maliciously. "And since you’re about to join him in Hell, why don’t you look up a Lunatac named Demrock and ask him about it. I’m sure he’ll be all too happy to tell you the rest." And then Torlei stretched WilyKit’s arms, summoned her telekinetic powers, and hurled the entire block of cutlery on the counter in the Thundercats’ direction.

Pumari screamed when she saw the knives fly through the air. Pumyra knocked her and her child to the ground, out of the way, while Panthro and Snoelle also dove for the floor. A cleaver flew dangerously close to one of Pumari’s hands, but the child was thankfully fast enough to get it out of the way and the instrument embedded itself in the linoleum of the floor. Pumyra meanwhile narrowly dodged a steak knife headed straight for her forehead. Unfortunately Snoelle wasn’t quite as fast as the two with puma blood, and a serrated butcher knife tore a jagged hole through her furred flesh and buried itself in her left leg. She yowled in pain, and Panthro, distracted by his mate’s cry of agony, scrambled to her side to shield her from further harm as a carving knife grazed his back and stabbed a table leg with an ominous thwack.

Less than a second after the last knife missed its mark, Pumyra leapt on the counter, snarling furiously. "You sick animal," she growled at WilyKit, seething with fury. "I don’t care what the hell you’ve been through! Nobody throws a goddamned knife at my daughter and gets away with it. I’m going to end this bullshit right once and for all, right now!" She roared in anger and leapt toward the possessed WilyKit.

Unimpressed and unamused by the outburst, Torlei cast her hand to one side, projecting enough telekinetic force to knock the puma to the floor mid-leap. "Animal, am I?" she hissed, bending over to pick up one of the fallen knives, "well then, kitty, why don’t we see if you’re as good a hunter as I know WilyKit is?" A sick smile spread over her lips as she backed toward the door in the darkness of the unlit kitchen. "You want a piece of me, Thundercat? Come and get me." And then, with speed that WilyKit shouldn’t have had, she retreated through the back door of the kitchen into the pitch-dark hallway beyond, on the loose in Cat’s Lair once more.

"Where do you think he went, Lion-O?"

Lion-O looked around fruitlessly in the darkness as he answered Bengali’s question. "I don’t know. And if I can’t get to the Sword, I can’t find out."

Bengali looked at the energy field over the entrance to the sword chamber. "I could try blasting my way in with the hammer, but that might take some time."

Lion-O shook his head. "No, we can’t do that now. We have to figure out why the power went out and where Mumm-Ra is, not to mention what he’s up to."

"Or how he got here in the first place," Bengali added. "He and Torlei were banished when we forged the Mighty Sword. How did he get back?"

"Torlei, I forgot about her," Lion-O groaned. "But Mumm-Ra seemed to be alone this time, strangely enough. Not that I’m going to count on that… if he’s managed to escape somehow, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did too."

"Where should we look first?" the tiger questioned his leader.

"If the lights went out, the logical assumption would be that the power generators were tampered with. Let’s check there and—"

Lion-O was cut off by a loud, rumbling crash. The floors began to shake, and the groans of stressed support beams and rafters sounded amidst smaller crashes of breakable objects falling off of walls, shelves, and tables. It lasted for several seconds, and then stopped. "Rrowl… what was that?" Bengali wondered aloud. "An earthquake? The gyroscope?"

"I don’t think so," Lion-O replied with a puzzled frown. "It seemed like it hit from the side, not below, if that’s possible."

Any further theorizing was cut off when the same crash and quake happened again, this time longer, and seemingly originating from a slightly different direction. This time Lion-O was knocked into the wall, while Bengali gripped a nearby doorjamb for support. Both heard the plaster of the ceilings crack and felt a fine shower of dusty particulate matter fall from above and cling to their fur.

"Lion-O," Bengali growled when the second quake ceased, "are you all right?"

"I’m fine," he assured him. "But what was that? It felt almost like it came from outside. Like some huge ship rammed into us or something!"

"I don’t know, but I’d bet a Thunderian mint that it’s got something to do with Mumm-Ra."

"And I’d bet that same amount that you’re right," Lion-O agreed. "Come on! Let’s get outside and find out!"

WilyKat breathed a sigh of relief as the ship that carried himself, Leonora, and Snarfer entered the airspace of Thundera near Cat’s Lair. It seemed like it had taken an eternity to get there, but finally they had made it. He reached over and gave Leonora a gentle shake to wake her. "We’re here."

The overtired lioness opened her eyes, awakened from her light sleep of troubled dreams. "Huh? Oh, we’re here?" she repeated, blinking.

WilyKat nodded a yes.

Leonora reached back and tapped Snarfer. "Wake up."

Snarfer stirred and sat up. "Oooh, rowr, we’re here already? What time is it?"

"We’re finally here," WilyKat confirmed. "And it’s not that late, it’s only a couple hours after dark. It just feels late because we’re still all on Third Moon time… it’s probably almost sunrise over there," he said with a tired sigh. "Anyway I’m about to call the Lair and let them know we’re here."

Leonora carefully studied the ship’s viewscreen. "How close are we to the Lair, Kat? I don’t see it. I mean I know it’s dark out and all, but wouldn’t it be lit up?"

WilyKat frowned. "Unless the Feliner II’s instruments are off, we’re not far at all. It should be visible." An ominous feeling gnawed in his stomach. "Gods, I hope we’re not too late. If Mumm-Ra and my sister got here already…"

"Let’s not worry about that until we’re sure we have a reason to," Snarfer said.

"Right. I’ll call them now." WilyKat picked up the communicator. "Cat’s Lair, this is WilyKat calling from the Feliner II. Do you read me, Lair?"

A buzz of static was the only response.

"Maybe it’s a bad connection?" Leonora said hopefully.

WilyKat fought back a growing feeling of dread and tried a second time. "Cat’s Lair, I repeat, this WilyKat in the Feliner II. Are you there?" Again, several seconds of silence passed with no answer. "Damn!" WilyKat swore, louder than he’d intended to. "Where are they? We never have the control room unmanned! Not unless—"

"Unless what?" Leonora asked, her voice taking on a worried tone.

"Unless we’ve all been called out to battle." He swallowed and clenched his fists. "That hasn’t happened since the Battle of the Swords."

Suddenly a large flash appeared on the monitor, distracting them from the unwelcome implications of WilyKat’s statement. "Snaaaaarfer! What was that?" exclaimed the snarf.

WilyKat tapped a few buttons on the panel and zoomed in on the image. Several more flashes appeared, and on the closer view it became clear that it was some sort of attack focused on a building. A large building. One that, in a particularly bright flash, they could see in part bore the shape of a feline head. "That’s the lair!"

"Oh no, the Thundercats are in trouble. We better get down there and help!"

WilyKat engaged the engines of the Feliner II and initiated the landing sequence. "I’m already on the way. Hold on."

Leonora and Snarfer sat back in their seats as WilyKat maneuvered the ship in the direction of the Lair. He powered up the weapons systems and turned on the searchlights as they approached, and to his horror he saw what it was that was causing the disturbance. Mumm-Ra, in the same gigantic form in which he’d destroyed the MoonTower back on the Third Moon of Plundarr, was outside of it, blasting the darkened structure with powerful beams of red lightning.

"Rowr… I guess that’s why they didn’t answer our call," Snarfer said.

"He’s not going to get away with this again," WilyKat growled determinedly, and shot a dual beam of laser fire from the Feliner II’s cannons at him.

The undead mage was caught off guard by the fire and roared in pain as it stung his back. He spun around, his huge red eyes ablaze with pure fury, and faced the ship. "Pitiful fools! Prepare to meet your end!" He raised one arm and shot a bolt of pure evil energy straight at them.

"SNAAAAAAAAAAAAARFER!! LOOK OUT!"

Acting in the same way Snarfer was thinking, WilyKat immediately lurched the craft to the side, but he wasn’t fast enough. Mumm-Ra’s beam struck it squarely in the side. All three of them let out shouts of panic as the controls sparked, the interior lights went out, and two of its engines stalled out. "WilyKat! What’s happening?" cried Leonora.

"He overloaded the main power supply unit, and the engines have gone offline," the frustrated WilyKat answered. He frantically pushed some buttons—as he couldn’t really see what was what with the panel lights and interiors out—until the emergency lights automatically switched on. When they did, and he could get a good look at the panel, he cursed again. "We’ve lost a lot of altitude… and with only reserve power, I’m afraid all I can do is force a landing."

"You mean we’re going to crash?" Leonora’s voice took on a shrill note of panic.

"‘Fraid so," WilyKat replied through clenched teeth. "Brace yourself!"

Snarfer and Leonora both sat back in their seats, gripping the handrails for dear life. "Try not to worry…" Snarfer said to Leonora. "He crashed lots of times when he was learning… er… that’s not what I meant… oh, snarfer snarfer, I mean he’s good at crashing…."

Fortunately WilyKat was too absorbed in the mechanics of getting the Feliner II safely to the ground to hear Snarfer’s left-handed complements. The youngest Thundercat took a deep breath and pushed the steering lever forward, using just the right combination of angle and speed to bring them toward the ground at a speed that wouldn’t kill them. They connected with a hard and abrasive jolt. Their bodies lurched forward with the inertia of the landing, banged around back and forth in their seats like so much dead weight as the Feliner II scraped across the dirt, stone, and brush of the dark and empty field beside New Cat’s Lair.

After what was less than a minute, but felt like an eternity, the now totaled air vehicle came to a complete stop. WilyKat groaned and pulled himself out of his seat. He was hurting, but not so badly that he couldn’t move. He was cut and bruised, and his broken arm hurt like hell after being banged around, but all things considered he could have been much worse. "Leonora… Snarfer… you all right?"

Snarfer, who had been holding his breath ever since they hit the ground, exhaled and undid his safety belt. "Yep… I’m fine. No keeping me down, snarfer snarfer," he said, hopping out of his chair looking none the worse for the wear.

"I’m okay too," Leonora said. She then let out a groan as she rubbed a bruise she’d sustained on the side of the head. "Let’s get out of here."

Lion-O and Bengali were almost to the main doors of Cat’s Lair when they ran into Tygra, Cheetara, Chet, and Snarf. Snarf immediately noticed that they were armed. "Lion-O! What’s going on?"

"And what caused those tremors and the power failure?" Tygra added, his voice full of alarm.

"Mumm-Ra is here," Lion-O said gravely. "I don’t know how he’s made it back to our realm, but we heard his voice."

Bengali growled and clenched his hammer. "And we’re going to stop him."

"And stop WilyKit?" Chet asked quietly.

"What?"

"WilyKit attacked him, Lion-O," Cheetara said sadly.

"What in the name of Jaga! Chet, are you all right?" Lion-O asked, kneeling by his son’s side.

"He is now," Tygra told him. "He was trapped under a weighted force field in his bedroom."

"He could barely breathe," Cheetara added with a shiver.

"And the room itself was sealed off with a burning energy field," Tygra finished.

"Just like the sword chamber," Bengali mused.

"The sword chamber?" Tygra asked.

"Rowr… it looks like a tornado hit it. The door is bashed in beyond repair and the entire wall is aflame with this burning electrical field. Lion-O couldn’t even get the Sword of Omens out."

Relieved to see that Chet was all right, despite what had happened, Lion-O put his hand on his shoulder. "You said WilyKit did that to you?"

Chet nodded.

"But how? WilyKit can’t manipulate energy fields! She can barely walk! We all saw her—"

Cheetara sighed. "She’s not herself, Lion-O. There’s an evil force controlling her."

"Drive out the evil that possesses her, and she will find her way back to you." Clarece’s words echoed through Tygra’s head.

"So that’s what it is. Possession," said a strained female voice from the hallway. The others turned to see Snoelle, limping and leaning heavily on Panthro. Pumari trailed behind them.

Bengali ran over immediately. The frightened Pumari immediately ran to her father’s side and hugged him tightly. Bengali put an arm around her and met Snoelle’s gaze. "Gods of Thundera! What happened to you?"

"WilyKit happened," Panthro said gravely. "She went nuts in the kitchen, tried to kill Pumari, and hurled knives at Snoelle, me, and Pumyra."

"What?" said a shocked Lion-O.

"Rowr, oh no, oh, this is terrible," moaned Snarf.

"Oh, Jaga," Cheetara gasped.

"The Darkness," Tygra murmured somberly. "It has taken her over."

"Pumari, are you all right?" Bengali asked. She nodded a yes. He turned toward Panthro and Snoelle. "And where is Pumyra? You said she was with you."

"She chased WilyKit," said Pumari.

Snarf bounced up on his tail worriedly. "All by herself?"

"Oh no!" Tygra exclaimed. "She can’t face off with her alone in the condition she’s in!"

"I agree. She’s completely unbalanced, unpredictable, and dangerous. If she’s possessed, as you said, she has no control over what she’s doing," Snoelle agreed.

Panthro nodded. "And we’ve got to stop her before she hurts anyone else… or herself."

"Even worse, we have to drive out the evil controlling her before the WilyKit we know will come back to us," Tygra told them.

"How do you know?" Lion-O demanded.

Tygra sighed. "Believe it or not, I actually had a visit from a spirit that warned me about this and told me that’s what we’d have to do."

"A spirit?" Lion-O repeated in disbelief. "Jaga?" He felt a stab of betrayal at the thought of his spectral mentor. Not only because he thought Jaga only appeared to him, but also because of what he recently learned about the lie Jaga, Tygra, and the others had kept from him for so many years. Had the situation not been so deadly and urgent, he wouldn’t even be speaking to Tygra at the moment.

Tygra shook his head. "Snarf Clarece, actually. I’ve seen her twice."

Snarf blinked in surprise. "You saw her again, Tygra?" Egbert had told him about the one incident, but he didn’t know it had happened again. "When?"

Tygra nodded. "The first time I saw her was a couple weeks ago. I saw her out at the ruins of the old Lair, and she talked to be about the twins. She was the one who convinced me that I should tell you and the twins about their father, Lion-O." The tiger paused as he felt another surge of guilt, and continued. "I didn’t even know she had passed on until Egbert told me she’d been dead for two years after I mentioned seeing her back at the Lair." His voice trailed off again for a few moments as he realized everyone’s eyes were upon him, and the darkened Lair around them was ominously quiet, as if waiting for him to finish his story. "The second time was just a little while earlier… right before Chet was attacked. She told me that WilyKit—the real WilyKit—was consumed by her own darkness and that evil is controlling her. Evil that we have to drive out, so that she could come back to us."

"Tygra… why didn’t you tell me?" Cheetara asked softly.

"We had other things to worry about, Cheetara. Chet’s safety, and yours. That was right before I found you unconscious by his door."

Lion-O closed his eyes and clenched his fists as he tried to take it all in. The news that his mate had been attacked also came as an added shock. Even though he was angry with Cheetara, he wished he had known she was in danger so he could have been there to help her. At least she was all right. He could talk to her about that, and all the other issues on his mind, after this was taken care of. "So she’s controlled by an evil force," Lion-O said, sorting through all that was being thrown at him. "It must be Mumm-Ra."

"And Torlei," Cheetara confirmed. "My sixth sense already told me that much. It showed me WilyKat, on his way here, and he was talking about them. I don’t know how they came back, but they did something terrible to everyone on the Third Moon of Plundarr. You saying that you heard Mumm-Ra confirms it."

"WilyKat’s alive then?" Panthro said hopefully. "Well that’s one piece of good news in this mess. What about Snarfer and Leonora?"

"I saw them all in the Feliner II. They’re all alive."

"Thank goodness," Lion-O said with some relief. "That’s one less thing to worry about. Now we can deal with the other

crises on hand."

Lion-O was interrupted when another quake, this one far more violent than any of the previous ones, thundered through the Lair. The floor shook violently enough that everyone lost their footing and stumbled backward. Snoelle, Snarf, and Tygra fell to the floor, while the others managed to remain standing only by fancy footwork or grabbing onto the nearest wall or heavy piece of furniture. This time they could hear the ominous sound of support beams cracking and the low whine of metal giving way. The Lair would not take many more hits that direct or strong without something giving.

"And not a moment too soon, it would seem," Lion-O said as the latest quake lessened. He turned to Panthro. "We need the power back on as soon as possible. I want you, Snarf, and Snoelle—if you’re up to it," he said with note to her injury, "—to try and get our power on again. I also want Chet and Pumari to stay with you for their safety. WilyKit has attacked them both, and she might very well try it again."

"I can help," Chet said bravely.

"Me too," Pumari agreed.

Snarf went between them and took each of their hands. "No. Lion-O is right. You two are very brave, but this is too dangerous. You stay with old Snarf and Panthro and Snoelle no matter what. All right?"

The two kids didn’t argue the point further, and nodded obediently.

Lion-O smiled at Snarf and the kids gratefully, then continued. "Cheetara, Tygra, I want you two to find Pumyra and WilyKit. Keep in mind that Pumyra might have already confronted her." He didn’t want to say she might have been hurt in front of the children and upset them needlessly, but it was a genuine concern. "When you find WilyKit, I want you to catch and restrain her, and do whatever you can to get her back to herself."

"We’ll find them," Cheetara said. Tygra gave a nod of acknowledgement as well.

The Thundercat Lord then turned to Bengali. "Bengali, you and I will go outside and confront Mumm-Ra."

"Without the Sword of Omens?" Snarf said worriedly.

"I don’t have a choice, Snarf. I’ve faced him without it before."

"And he won’t be alone. He won’t get far without a fight," Bengali said determinedly. "We’ll go against him with everything we’ve got, even if it means our lives."

"That’s what I’m afraid of," Snarf murmured.

Grunting with effort and more than a slight bit of pain, WilyKat pushed hard on the front end of the damaged hatch of the Feliner II with his good arm, while Leonora and Snarfer pushed upward on the sides. Though the top wasn’t as damaged by the crash as much of the rest of the ship had been, the metal was still quite twisted and bent, and it didn’t give way easily. They struggled with it for several minutes until finally fate smiled upon them and the broken hatch creaked open just wide enough for the three of them to fit through.

WilyKat climbed out first, followed by Snarfer, and then Leonora. The three of them rushed from the wreck, toward the Cat’s Lair, when Snarfer stopped short. "Hey… wait a minute! Where’d Mumm-Ra go?"

The trio looked at each other in confusion, then back at the Lair. From what little they could see in the dim moonlight the stars and Plundarrian moons cast in the nighttime Thunderian sky, the giant form of Mumm-Ra that had been attacking the Thundercats’ home was nowhere to be seen. "But he was just there…" WilyKat murmured.

Just then, an impossibly loud crash, followed by a ground quake powerful enough to make them all stumble, came from directly behind them. The three of them whirled around, adrenaline pumping through their veins, and to their horror saw that the giant Mumm-Ra had just squashed the wrecked Feliner II under his foot like a bug. His blazing red eyes stared down at them with intense hatred. "You will die," the undead mage growled.

"I don’t think so," WilyKat growled back. He reached for an explosive pellet and threw it at the undead mage. He hadn’t used them in so long the brightness of the flash and its explosion almost surprised him when Mumm-Ra swatted it with his giant blue hand.

Mumm-Ra cursed at the stinging sensation and hurled a blast of red lightning their way. Leonora and Snarfer tumbled to one side, while WilyKat rolled to the other. "My gods… he’s even more frightening than the stories made him out to be," Leonora murmured in awe. "Can we fight that?" She clutched the Staff of Dera tightly in her hands.

"We’ve fought him before, snarfer snarfer. He sure is big and scary in that giant form though… I don’t think I ever saw him get that big when we fought him before. Of course, that was a long time ago now."

"And this time I am stronger than ever before," Mumm-Ra growled malignantly. "Prepare to meet your end, puny mortals." He raised his hands and sent a powerful bolt of evil energy toward them. Snarfer and Leonora tried to scramble out of the way, but tendrils of energy from the beam caught them and drew them back, despite their struggles. Both screamed in agony as it seared into them.

"NO!" screamed WilyKat. He hurled an entire handful of the explosive pellets at Mumm-Ra, charging at him like a madman. Mumm-Ra roared in pain as the pellets struck his chest and exploded. Leonora and Snarfer both fell to the ground, gasping for breath and wincing in pain, but still alive. As they got their bearings, WilyKat drew a laser pistol that he picked up before leaving the Third Moon of Plundarr and shot him over and over again.

Mumm-Ra threw the attack off with a force field and stepped back. "Your rage suits you, Thundercat," he sneered. "I see that your sister isn’t the only one with a taint of darkness to her."

"Shut the fuck up!" WilyKat snarled back with uncharacteristic vehemence.

"Temper, temper, kitten," Mumm-Ra mocked.

"You’re going to burn in all the hells for what you did to my sister, and for all the lives you’ve destroyed," WilyKat growled. He shot at him again.

Leonora ran up behind him. "Calm down, WilyKat," she pleaded. "We have to get in the Lair. We might still be able to save her!"

Mumm-Ra chuckled ominously. "It’s too late for that, lioness." He stared WilyKat dead in the eye. "You know it’s true…and that’s why you’re so furious right now. That’s why your soul is burning for revenge… giving into its own destiny of the Hour of Darkness."

"That’s not true!" Snarfer shouted angrily. "WilyKat! Come on! Leonora’s right. We gotta get inside. Remember why we came here… we need to warn the Thundercats before what happened on the Third Moon happens here. You know that Mumm-Ra’s only trying to distract us!"

"Well he’s not going to get far," a determined and very welcome voice sounded behind. Snarfer and Leonora turned and to their relief saw Lion-O running toward them, along with Bengali.

"Lion-O!" Snarfer exclaimed.

"Lion-O?" WilyKat also turned around. "Bengali?"

Mumm-Ra rolled his eyes at Lion-O’s predictably overconfident appearance. "Oh goody, look who’s come out to play."

"Good to see you alive, Kat," Bengali said to the younger Thundercat with a small smile. "We were worried about you. All of you."

"Where’s Kit?"

"She’s inside… and she’s not herself. She’s possessed, we think," Lion-O informed them. "And she’s dangerous."

"Figured out that much did you? I’m impressed," Mumm-Ra said sarcastically. He shot at the group of them with a wide spray of red lightning.

They scattered to avoid being hit. "Get into the Lair," Lion-O told the three new arrivals. "Bengali and I will deal with Mumm-Ra. You have to get to WilyKit and help the others find a way to get her out of Torlei’s control. And hurry!"

WilyKat, Leonora, and Snarfer didn’t need to be told twice. They broke into a run for the Lair’s front door. Mumm-Ra tried to shoot them on their way in, but Bengali shot back at the giant demon-priest with a beam from his hammer.

"Dealing with me will not be as simple as you seem to think it will," Mumm-Ra hissed angrily. "You cannot defeat me without your Sword of Omens, Lion-O."

"I did it once," Lion-O snarled back, firing on him with a hand laser. "I can do it again."

"Can you now?" Mumm-Ra challenged. "We’ll just see." The ever-living mage threw his head back and laughed maniacally, and then with a sinister flash of light, vanished from sight.

Bengali looked around wildly, ready to strike with his hammer at any surprise attack. Lion-O also tensed in anticipation for the unexpected, but the air hung still and silent for several moments. There was no further sign of their undead foe. "Where did he go?" Bengali wondered.

"I don’t know… and I don’t like it," Lion-O replied, scanning the area for anything out of the ordinary.

"I don’t like it either," Bengali growled. "He’s playing games with us. Maybe he wants us to go back inside to face him… or WilyKit."

Lion-O looked back at the Lair and fought a dark feeling. It was times like this when he wished Jaga would appear to him and tell him what to do, but it had been some time since he’d last seen the spirit of his mentor. That left him with a feeling of unease. Jaga had never let him down before.

"Lion-O?"

Lion-O turned back to Bengali and met his gaze.

"Should we go back in?" the tiger asked.

Lion-O sighed and looked at the still-dark, ominous outline of Cat’s Lair in the night sky. "Yes."

Bengali nodded back, and started for the Lair. Hoping that he’d made the right decision, Lion-O followed closely behind.

The emergency generators switched on just as WilyKat, Leonora, and Snarfer entered Cat’s Lair. "Hmm… power’s back on," Snarfer mused. "I guess that’s a good sign."

"Not for you it isn’t, furball," a sinister female voice sneered from the landing at the top of the stairs above. The three of them looked up to see WilyKit, leaning smugly against the banister.

"Kit… thank Jaga! You’re alive!" WilyKat exclaimed.

Impulsively he started to rush forward, but Leonora grabbed his wrist and held him back. "Remember, that’s not her," she reminded him. The crystal on the end of the Staff of Dera started to glow brightly. She realized that it was picking up on the evil presence controlling the female Thundercat.

She snarled at the lioness. "You should be dead. I’ll have to make sure I’m not so sloppy this time."

Snarfer let out a low whine. "WilyKit… how can you say that? Snarfer, snarfer, come on… you’ve got to remember!"

"You’re stronger than her, Kit," WilyKat said quietly, but earnestly. "Fight her."

Torlei, still in full control of the Thundercat, laughed. "You’re acting like you think she still has a chance. She’s history, boy…get used to it. I’m your sister now."

Pumyra emerged from the shadows of the far hallway on the other side of the floor, along with Tygra and Cheetara, who had caught up with her a few minutes before. "No," Pumyra said coldly. She was still full of rage about the attempted stabbing of Pumari, but Cheetara and Tygra had calmed her down enough now that she was no longer blinded by it. She understood that it wasn’t WilyKit who had done that much, though some of the things Torlei had said left her with a feeling of distrust and unease of WilyKit anyway, possessed or not.

"Oh? And what are you going to do about it? Stab me?" Torlei mocked.

Cheetara stepped between them. "You can’t control her forever. She will come back to us. She’s strong… and she’s fighting."

Torlei snarled and threw one of WilyKit’s explosive pellets in their direction. "And you lie through your spots, cheetah! You think I didn’t know what you were trying to do, contacting her with that ‘sixth sense’ of yours? I know exactly what you saw!"

WilyKat looked to Cheetara questioningly. "You saw her?"

"She saw her, all right. She saw her about to get her head bashed in by the spirit of Grune the Destroyer," Torlei seethed. "She saw her cowering like a baby in the arms of my nosy nephew, who if I have my way, will be torn into tiny pieces by Demrock or Kalin… or beaten into a bloody mess along with WilyKit once Grune’s finished with her."

"Grune!" Leonora gasped. "But why would he do it?"

"Grune was a traitor," Panthro spoke up from below. He, Snoelle, Snarf, and the children had just emerged from the basement, and walked in on the scene in the atrium unfolding. "He needs no more reason than that."

"Oh, please, spare me your moralizations," Torlei snapped at the panther. "What Grune wants is revenge. Do you have any comprehension of the hatred he has for you Thundercats, especially WilyKit and her twin, the flesh and blood result of Scarlette and Claudus’ sleazy affair?"

WilyKat froze in shock as he heard his possessed sister’s words. "Wh-what?" Scarlette… Claudus… flesh and blood…

A malicious and twisted grin spread across WilyKit’s features as she realized that he didn’t know. "You mean, they didn’t tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"We were going to tell you, WilyKat—" Cheetara started.

Tygra also started explaining. "It just wasn’t the right time when you left, and we were hoping that when you all got home from the Third Moon—"

"Tell me what?" WilyKat repeated, taking a few steps up the large staircase.

Torlei took a few steps down, advancing toward him. "Why, the truth about who you are, WilyKat. Who your parents are. How you were gypped out of your own birthright by your dear Lord Lion-O down there." She gestured to Lion-O and Bengali, who were on their way in through the main doors of Cat’s Lair.

"That’s not how it was!" Tygra interjected heatedly.

"He’s right," Panthro asserted. "Don’t listen to her, WilyKat. She’s twisting it."

"Twisting what?" WilyKat demanded. "Tell me! I want to know!"

"Congratulations, WilyKat," Torlei said with a wicked grin. "You’re the illegitimate child of the Lord of the Thundercats and Grune’s fiancée. How does it feel to be a bastard?"

WilyKat’s heart pounded. Something rang horribly true to her words, though he desperately didn’t want to believe them. "No… that can’t be true…"

"They wouldn’t have lied," Snarfer said, also shocked by the possessed Thundercat’s statement.

Torlei twirled WilyKit’s lariat around her fingertip and giggled. "You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? That your dear friends and family couldn’t possibly be capable of keeping such a truth from you? That they would never dream of hurting you in such a way?"

She shook her head and continued. "I know what you’re thinking. You can’t imagine that your own father would sit by and give the Lordship to his little golden boy, borne to him by his lawful lioness mate, when he already had two children that rightfully had the claim by blood. It seems impossible that a man like Claudus, known for upholding the Code of Thundera—Truth, Justice, Honor, and Loyalty—would not only sleep with a fellow Thundercat’s beloved, but also cover up the mistake for years and years and get his people to help him do it. It seems like a stretch and makes a mockery of what you were taught, doesn’t it?"

WilyKat’s expression was torn and full of disbelief as he listened to what the creature in control of his sister was saying. It sounded so unbelievable… but when he thought about it, it made sickeningly perfect sense.

Torlei could see the lost and frustrated feeling in his eyes. She knew how deeply it hurt, because she knew it hurt WilyKit when she had seen the female twin deal with having the truth thrown in her face by Grune not long ago in the other realm. It gave her a twisted feeling of satisfaction to do the same in person to WilyKat.

WilyKat looked at Tygra, who’s expression was downcast with guilt. He saw the same thing in Cheetara’s eyes, in Panthro’s, and even in Snarf’s. "You knew?" he managed to choke out.

"Jaga told us," Cheetara said.

"And you thought he could do no wrong," WilyKit’s insane voice giggled. "Surprise!"

"How could you do that to me?"

Lion-O stepped forward. "That’s a question I’d still like to know the answer to, WilyKat… but it’s one that will have to wait until our sister is out of Torlei’s clutches and home safe with us."

"He’s right," Snoelle said. "Saving WilyKit’s soul is what’s important right now."

Torlei glared at the snow leopard. "Her soul is damned for all eternity," she hissed coldly, hurling a telekinetic blast at her.

Unable to move out of the way in time because of the throbbing knife wound in her leg, Snoelle stumbled as the energy struck her in the chest. Panthro growled and leapt forward in defense of his mate. He shoved past the stunned WilyKat and charged up the stairs. "I refuse to believe that! The WilyKit we know has a good heart. She may have her doubts and her faults like we all do, but she’s not evil and she’s strong… a hell of a lot stronger than a cold and manipulative bitch like you!"

"You’re so sure of that," she hissed back contemptuously.

"You’re damn right I am," he agreed. "And I’m going to prove it."

Cheetara’s sixth sense tingled with unease as Panthro moved closer to the possessed Thundercat. "Panthro—"

"I know what I’m doing, Cheetara," he cut her off. He stared hard into WilyKit’s eyes. "As for you, I’m going to call your bluff. I don’t believe that the strong and kind-hearted WilyKit I helped raise will let you stay in control of her forever. I think that she’s going to fight her way out and I’m going to see to it that she does… by fighting you."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," Torlei said through narrowed eyes. "But harm her body and you harm her. My true form is ever-living."

"Your true form is nothing but a miserable ghost, otherwise you wouldn’t have jumped into her body." He picked up his nunchuks and threw them over the railing so he was unarmed. "I would never hurt you, WilyKit. You know that. I love you just like the rest of us."

As soon as he discarded his weapon, Torlei pounced on him, knocking him back against the railing. Panthro put up enough of a fight to keep her from throwing him down the stairs or choking him, but he did nothing more than restrain her. The other Thundercats started to come to his aid, but he waved them back. "No! If WilyKit's really as lost to us as she says—and I don't believe she is—then I'm going to do whatever it takes to bring her out. The WilyKit wouldn't hurt a fellow Thundercat, not when it came down to it. I know she is strong and I know she'll find a way to stop this insanity."

"Panthro, I don’t—"

"No, Lion-O," Panthro growled, pushing WilyKit’s choking hands off his neck. He locked his eyes with hers, challenging the crazed, hateful being that stared back at him, searching for any glimmer of the Thundercat he knew. His voice remained steady even as he faced her down, full of emotion but not weakening in its determination. "You know as well as I do that our WilyKit would never turn her back on us. She’s too stubborn and strong willed to let some undead psycho ruin her life. She knows that we all love her. She knows that no matter what happened, no matter what she did, we’d still love her and try to understand and help her. Don’t you, WilyKit?"

"No," Torlei snarled contemptuously. "You can’t help her, now or ever! And your foolish sentimentality just cost you your life, panther." She grasped at a weapon stashed in her belt, the same knife she'd taken from the kitchen earlier.

Her brother, standing closest, saw the deadly glint of metal flash as it slashed through the air. "WILYKIT, NO!"

WilyKat bolted forward, but he reached them a second too late. With a feral roar, WilyKit plunged the knife into Panthro’s chest, stabbing it in deep and twisting it before she pulled it back out, covering them all in hot spray of blood. Panthro screamed in agony and looked up at her with an uncomprehending expression as he gasped for breath and clutched at the gaping hole in his chest.

All too happy to share the pain, Torlei relinquished control of WilyKit for a brief second. She numbed her own senses so that even in her other realm, WilyKit could feel the blood on her hands and see the face of her old friend. And in his last moments of consciousness, Panthro did see a flash of guilt and sorrow momentarily replace the cruel look in his young friend’s eyes. It was the last thing he saw before the world went black around him, and he fell still against the stair.