An unnamed planet somewhere in the galaxy

"This is where it said the Circus was, but I don't see it." said Alluro looking around.

"Wait, there is is, I'd recognize that awful music anywhere." said Chilla, pointing to a bright light in the distance.

"How are we supposed to spring the stupid bird?" asked Chilla.

"Right under their unobservant noses. Watch this." Alluro walked up to the entrance.

"Tickets please," the guy at the front asked.

"You don't see to see our tickets." said Alluro, keeping both eyes fixed on the agent. "You will now take us to see the one known as Vultureman."

"I will take you to see Vultureman." Actually the underpaid ticket guy would have done it anyway, just for a change of scenery.

"See, very simple." he said to Chilla.

"It would have been more fun if I had frozen him." she hissed back.

"True, but we need him to continue as if we had never been here."

After walking past neumerous cages, they arrived at the Mutants cage. The mutants were, as usual, arguing and fighting. The agent turned to leave and just becuase she wanted to, Chilla froze him.

"Such rude behavior, how very uncivilized." Alluro commented to Chilla.

"Indeed, you won't catch Luna-Taks doing that." agreed Chilla.

"How do you propose we retrieve the subject?"

"Stand back." Inhaling deeply, she iced the cage.

"Well, that worked like a charm. Just one thing, we were just supposed to get Vultureman."

"I'm not done yet, mind-boy." using her heat ray like a surgon's scapel, Vultureman was neatly extracted from the rest of the mutants. Dragging Vultureman like a sack of feed, they headed for the exit, loaded him into the ship and headed back to Third Earth.

"What about the rest of them?" asked Alluro

"Rest of what?"
 

Third Earth.

The Madiens returned to the Council Chamber. Willa spoke, "We certinaly appreciate the gravity of the situation, but we simply cannot involve ourselvs in your battles. We ..oof," Willa's ribcage suddenly found itself impaled by Nayda's elbow.

"Sorry about that, but I cannot let you do that, sister. What makes you think that the Luna-Taks will stop with destroying the ThunderCats? After they off them, the rest of 3rd Earth is next. From there, who knows what. We need to work with them to defeat whatever is happening. Unless you want to return to the way it was before the ThunderCats got here? I want the night to think about it. You'll get my answer tomorrow. I don't know what Willa will do." with that she turned on heel and left. Willa just stood there, shocked at her sister's sudden outburst. "I, uh, I'll let you know. Nayda wait!" she called after her sister.

"Well, that was interesting." said Pumyra.
 

Skytomb

"Well, don't just stand there with your faces hanging out, thaw him!" Luna screeched.

"Do we have to? Vulturemans never been so useful. See, he makes for very useful furniture" said Alluro.

"Tempting, but we need him."

"Fine." Alluro pulled an IR gun off the wall and melted the ice.

"Slythe, I told you...." Vultureman sputtered.

"Show some respect for your superiors, feather brain. You are in Skytomb. We have need of your meager skillset." Luna said.

"What if I don't want to?"

"Then we will be forced to negotiate. Amok show Vultureman how we bargin."

Amok carefully placed Luna on the ground and picked up Vultureman. Together they walked to an open window. "Amok, show him the terms of his employment."

Amok held Vultureman out the window while Luna spelled out the terms.

"You work for us, and we let you live. Tell me, how does that grab you?"

Vultureman looked down and realized that the ground was nowhere in sight.

"All right, fine, just bring me back in." he managed to choke out.

Amok returned Vultureman to comparitive safety of Skytomb.

"What do you want from me?" said Vultureman still coughing.

"TugMug, bring in the weapon."

TubMug brought in a cart on which was mounted a small ray gun. "This little gadget of Alluro's will assure us of total control over 3rd Earth and the defeat of Mumm-Ra. The problem is that it is too small." explained Luna.

"Much like her," Chilla whispered to Red Eye.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Mutant, we need you make it bigger." said Luna, her temper rising again.

"Again, why me?"

"You are expendible, besides Alluro will be busy writing the programs to aim and control the device."

"Let me get this straight. You brought me all the way back here to build something that already exists?" asked Vultureman, still not comprehending what exactly the point of all this was.

"Allow me to explain. The miserable ThunderCats have devised countermeasures for every weapon we have. The only thing they can't beat is the weather. If we control that, we control everything on the planet."
 

Cat's Lair, late morning.

Tygra had most of the remaining vehicles spread out over the front area. They were all in various stages of disrepair. He was underneath the ThunderClaw, with a steady stream of quiet profanity eminating from the same vicinity. A lone figure ran up the extended bridge. "I want to join. I don't want to go back to the way things used to be. It was horrid, we were fighting for our very lives every day." said Nayda, almost out of breath.

Scooting out from under the vehicle, a grease smeared Tygra said, "Good, welcome aboard. As your first official act, could you hand me that injector and the tube of anti-seize compound? I still don't know why Panthro used aluminium heads on these things."

"That's it? Just a welcome aboard? I thought..."

"That there was some sort of initiation, right? As I said yesterday, since you're not Thunderian, there is no real official ceremony. The best we can really do is record you in the history and give you our most sincere thanks. It's sad really, all those who have helped over the years and we have no official way of acknowledging them. But, if you'll follow me, I get you into the computers and we'll see what we can do in the way of an orientation. Where's Willa, I don't see her anywhere?" asked Tygra.

"Oh, she didn't want to come, she said we've come this far without help and she sees no reason why we should join up. What a pain in the butt." said Nayda as they walked inside. At this point Tygra was so burnt out by 18 hour days that he would have handed over the reins of the Lair to a Berbil in exchange for a good nights sleep.
 

SkyTomb

"OWWWW!!, Stupid machine!" cried Vultureman, nursing a just singed thumb. "Why can't you do the wiring?"

"Becuase, you bird brained moron, I'm doing things that actually require brainpower. I'm writing the code that runs this contraption. Now stick the turning the wrenches or else." said Alluro.

"Or else what?" Vultureman said while throwing a screwdriver on the floor.

Alluro had enough of the mutant's whining and decided to fix his little red wagon once and for all. "Or else this," grabbing the psyche club he let it go over the mutants head and informed him that he liked working on the machine. He lived to work on it. This was fun.
 

Cat's Lair

Nayda was up in the Control Room trying to make sense of the directions to the battle computers. Just then, one of the buttons on the control board lit up. Since Tygra was nowhere to be seen, she reached out and pressed it. The main viewscreen lit up with the terminus of the extension bridge on screen. There was a figure at the end. Looking around she found the zoom control. Pushing up on the lever, the picture zoomed in on the figure. "Tygra, it's Willa, and she looks frightened."

"Let her in, then" came the reply over the intercom.

A few more buttons to be pressed and she was inside heading for the control room.

"It happened again." Willa said breathlessly.

"What happened?" asked Nayda.

"Another one of those beams hit, only it nearly caught me. Where's Tygra? Shouldn't he be here?"

"He's in the head."

"Oh, I'll wait for him to finish then."

"No, he's in the head." she repeated pointing up, "He's replacing the, what did he call them, rotators." Willa looked up and saw the skylift with the bottom half of it's occupant showing.

Hearing Willa's story he came down and asked her to repeat exactly what happened.

"I don't like this at all. They're getting bolder. Striking in the middle of the day like that really requires a set of brass ones." said Tygra.

"Brass what's?" asked Willa.

"Nevermind."
 

Tower of Omens, the ready room.

"We've got to get over there and find out what they're doing." said Tygra.

"But how? Somehow they know when we're over there. Everytime the ThunderStrike goes through the tunnel they've been waiting." Pumyra added.

"We need to find someway to get over there without them knowing it."

This time it was Willa who spoke up. "When we follow something, we just send a few warriors. They can move faster and it's harder to see us."

"Point well noted, but who to send?"

No one particularly wanted to be sent in. All eyes suddenly floated to random corners of the room. "Come people, someone's got to do it." Tygra was wondering just how Lion-O managed to get this crew to pull together. Pumyra looked around at the assembled rabble. Then an idea occured, "I'll do it." she said. Everyone turned to her with surprise.

"You? I mean *ahem*excellent idea. If I could ask why?" Tygra asked somewhat awkwardly.

"In the years I've been here, I've never really done anything. I want this, I want to be in the shit instead of flying near it or watching it from the sidelines." Pumyra's brain was informing her that she was not really saying this and to shut up before she says something really stupid.

Tygra, relieved that finally someone was stepping up and taking some responsibility, started to explain the mission.

"I'm going with her." Nayda interrupted.

"You can't, I need you here." Tygra protested.

"Tough, I'm going anyway. Allowing Pumyra to go in by herself is asking for trouble."

As soon as Tygra had finished explaining what was supposed to happen, Willa pulled Nayda aside. "Why did you say you wanted to go along? We've never done anything like this before."

"Willa, I signed up to help, and that's what I intend to do. Besides, what are we going to do here, sit around and wait? What if Pumyra doesn't come back, we would never know what was happening until it was to late. Two of us increases the chance one will come back, unless you've forgotten why we never send anyone out alone." Willa could tell by the edge still in Nayda's voice that she was still angry from the previous night. She decided not to pursue the conversation. The four of them were standing in the vehicle bay of the Tower. Tygra was finishing up loading supplies in the ThunderClaw. Pumyra was running final system checks, Willa and Nayda were standing around feeling somewhat out of place.

"All right, that does it." Tygra announced, "Everythings loaded in, good luck, Jaga be with you." He opened the doors, Pumyra started the engines and they left. Tygra and Willa watched the vehicle until it became nothing more than a dot in the sky.

"Do you think they'll be ok?" Willa asked.

"Yes, I do." answered Tygra, now having second and third thoughts about this plan.
 

Forest of Mists tunnel exit.

"There it is, DarkSide." said Pumyra waving a hand over the scene of desolation in front of them.

"Not much to look at." replied Nayda

"Perhaps, but looks can be decieving, especially here."

As if to prove the point an bird flew by and landed on an unassuming plant. Out of nowhere the plant's flower quickly closed on the bird and started chewing. A small trickle of bright red blood eminated from the flower.

"You don't say." Nayda said watching the scene of devestation in front of her.

"Shall we get started, then?" Pumyra said brightly.
 

The campsite
Pumyra's Personal Prose

It is still difficult to believe what has happened over the past several days. First we find a dead snarf, which leads to Tygra uncovering a Luna-Tak plot. Then, he appoints a human to honorary ThunderCat status and now here I am with Nayda, alone in hostile territory, actually trying to find Skytomb and determine what, if anything, is happening. This is a complete reversal of my usual part. For most of my tour of duty with the ThunderCats, I have been holding a secondary position. Always providing support, staying at home to monitor the situation, or coming along as an extra set of hands. It was a role I felt resigned to accept. Only Kit and Kat were used less. I still don't believe that I volunteered for this assigment. I must be going crazy. Of course, Tygra didn't have to accept it, but he did. I cannot fail. Enough of that, on to other matters.

Nayda. I have never worked with a human before. On Thundera we kept pretty much to ourselves, seldom mixing with other Thunderian clans, never mind other races. This seems so very odd. The last time I encountered another race, we were taken hostage and held for a ransom like so much lunchmeat. I still see those horrible faces of my captors, still feel the cold metal of the chains, the dampness of the tunnels and the creeping death of the Thunderainum. I just hope she knows what she is doing. As I write this Nayda is off attempting to hunt down some food. I don't know if it is the stress of the situation, the fact that our lives are depending upon each other, or something more esoteric, but I feel a duty to this human, a feeling that she belongs to us somehow. Who knows, maybe the Code of Thundera is not limited to Thunderians after all. Anyway, I shall stop now, Nayda has asked me to keep an eye out for any activity.

Pumyra's ears perked up. Something was moving toward the camp. Slowly, she pulled an energy ball from her bag and loaded up her slingshot. It was coming closer, Pumyra could feel her pulse quicken and muscles tense up. "Damn, we've been discovered," she thought. "Well, whoever this is, is in for a fight. If I'm gonna go down, it's coming with me." She inched toward the back of the back of the camp, to make room for an attack. "Come on you bastard, it's go time." she said under her breath. Pumyra started to swing her slingshot, "Gotta get the first shot in, might be the only one I get." she thought. It was coming ever closer. It broke through the brush, Pumyra fired without stopping to think. Nayda hit the dirt faster than a well trained Marine.

"Good gods, woman! It's only me. Nayda, remember? We work together." exclaimed Nayda, looking up from behind a small pile of dirt.

"Sorry, I've never done this before." said Pumyra, whose blood pressure was only now returning to normal.

"Do you think they saw that?" asked Pumyra.

"No, it landed over there, in the water." said Nayda. She pointed to one of the many small puddles that dotted the area.
 

Skytomb

Alluro and Vultureman were standing watching the viewscreen in Skytomb.

"Well Vultureman, it would appear that the new weapon is a great success. I have just one question. WHY DID YOU MISS? She got away." Alluro said.

"I don't know. It's your pitiful excuse for a tracking system." replied Vultureman. He was getting a little tired of this Luna-Taks superior attitude. He was forever putting down Mutant technology, declaring everything Luna-Tak to be the height of everything.

"The system worked perfectly on the model. You must have screwed it up, as usual." Vulturman stomped off to the drawing board, grabbed the plans and stomped back to the workshop. He threw the plans down on the table in front of Alluro.

"This was built exactly to your specifications. If there is anything screwed up, you drew it that way!!" said an enraged Vulureman. He had been putting in 24 hour days to get this thing working and he would be dammed if he was going to put up with any more crap from this particular Luna-Tak. Alluro was about to find out that a Mutant could give as well as he could take. Squaring up his shoulders and drawing up to his full height, Vultureman turned to face Alluro.

"Listen up, you balding freak. I don't give a good god damn about Amok, Luna or the rest of your dregs of Plundarian society. If your technology is so great, why the hell haven't you wiped out the ThunderCats by now? Why, because you can't. You haven't learned how to work together. They do. You don't."

"I don't have to stand here and listen to this from a mutant." Alluro said while leaving the room.

"Oh yes you do. Becuase I'm just going to follow you." yelled Vultureman after him.

Alluro wheeled around in the hall and turned back to Vultureman, "All right smart guy, fix it."

"Fine, I will." Vultureman returned to the workshop, the doors slid shut and the lock light lit. Alluro tried to use his personal codes to unlock the doors, but they did not work. "Why that half breed, no account, floor flushing... He changed the lock." Alluro thought. He was actully somewhat proud of the mutant. It took real guts to talk back to a Luna-Tak, let alone abscond with a portion of Skytomb. From outside the door, Alluro could hear sounds of construction and demolition. He needed to get in there. Alluro went off to find Red Eye.
 

Darkside campsite

Sitting near the parked ThunderStrike, Pumyra was busy thinking how exactly to find Skytomb. It always seemed to be around when it wasn't wanted, but try to find it when you needed it. "Just like Mandora," she thought. Then an idea hit.

"Nayda, hand me a pair of binoculars." Scanning the valley in front of them, she spotted a large glowing mound off in the distance. It was dotted with brighter spots that flared in brightness occasionally. "Protovision, I have you now." she thought smugly. "Tygra's not the only one who can quote movie lines."

"Find something?" Nayda asked.

"Yup, we found them. They're over there, that small jagged peak next to the canyon."

Nayda followed Pumyra's outstretched finger to see a large, barely visible, black lump. Nayda just hoped that Pumyra knew what she was looking at.

"So, how do we find out what they're up to? It's not like we can just waltz up to the door and ask 'Hey, what sort of evil, nefarious scheme are you folks up to? Can we see?'"

This was a problem. Neither of them had much of an idea what to do next. Traditionally, one of the others had taken over at this point. Pumyra could almost hear Lion-O telling her that she would stay here and him and Panthro would go see what's what.
 

Syktomb

Alluro went off to find Red Eye. He found him stumping around the lower portion of the fortress. "Red Eye, I need you to get me back into the workshop."

"Why, didum's forget their codes again?" Red Eye was just not in the mood to deal with his cowokers at the moment.

"No, Vultureman locked himself in and changed the codes. I need to get back in to find out what he is doing."

"About damn time someone knocked him down a few pins." Red Eye thought chuckling to himself. "Come on, I'll get you back in." Alluro knew Red Eye had master codes for everything in Skytomb. They arrived at the workshop. "Turn around."

"Why?"

"Just do it all right."

While Alluro had his back turned, Red Eye punched in the master code. The doors didn't move.

"See, I told you he changed the codes."

"Shut up a minute, let me think." Red Eye snapped. There was a system override, if only he could remember how it worked. Pushing another code caused an access panel near the floor to open. Bending down Red Eye reached in and pulled the release valve for the door hydraulics. The doors popped open an inch. Moving back to the doors, Alluro and Red Eye each grabbed one of the doors and pushed them back into the wall. Entering the workshop Alluro spoke first. "Vultureman, now I will be forced to hurt..." his voice trailing off as he caught sight of what was in front of him.

"My god, what is that?" he asked.

"That, is our new weather cannon. Continous tracking, six beam focus, interplanetary range, hydraulic positioning accurate to a half degree."

Alluro could just stand there looking at it. Unlike the earlier design, this one took up the entire room. A low frequency hum permeated the space. This one did not have its own power supply, Red Eye was the first to notice the bundle of cables linking it directly to Skytomb's generators.

"Did you say interplanetary range?" asked Red Eye.

"Yes." replied Vultureman.

"Let's test this baby." Red Eye said.

Vultureman turned on the viewscreen in the workshop. "Gentlemen, and I use that term loosely, I give you the universe. What should we target?"

An idea occured to Alluro, "The Planet of the Snarfs."

"Why?"asked Vultureman and Red Eye simultanously.

"Let's just say I have a score to settle."

"Hey, whatever floats your boat." said Vulturman.

Moving over to a control panel, Vultureman threw six large switches. As he did so, the hum was replaced by the sound of large induction motors winding up. The lights dimmed as meters on the control panel moved into position. Vultureman then opened the bay doors and pressed the button that expanded the gun to full capacity. Around the perimeter of the main barrel, six smaller barrels appeared. Returning to the control panel, Vultureman called up Skytomb's main computers and found the coordinates of the Planet of the Snarfs. He transferred those coordinates to the cannon's firing computer. "Alluro, if you would be so kind as to press that large red button there."

"This one?" he asked.

"Yes," said Vultureman with an evil grin.

Alluro pressed it. He was rewarded with a plesant female voice saying "Targeting." The power meters on the control panel moved to full and a red beam shot out of each of the six smaller barrels.

"Nothing's happening." said Red Eye, " You failed again."

"Wait" replied Vultureman.

As the watched the view screen they could see six red dots coming together on the chosen planet. As each dot found it's mark, a coresponding light on the panel changed from red to green. As soon as all six lights went green, the voice was heard again. "Target locked, preparing to engage main cannon." Another meter started to move from a resting position to the high end of its range. "Cannon ready. Fire." With the six smaller barrels still active, a new much larger blue beam shot out of the main barrel on a direct course to its destination.
 

Darkside campsite

Nayda and Pumyra were sitting down trying to figure out what to do next. Then out of the corner of her eye, Nayda saw a light appear from the lump they had been watching. As she watched, six red beams appeared from the patch of light, they appeared to form a cone focused on something in the sky. Then the six were joined by a much fatter blue beam that shot toward whatever the six reds were focused on.

"Pumyra, do you see that?" she asked not entirely believing what she saw. Pumyra was already on her feet with the binoculars trying to see what those beams were focuesed on. As far as the binoculars could see was a small pinkish dot in the sky.

"Fire up the ThunderClaw, we're going in." she said with a determination she didn't know she had. They pulled the brush off the vehicle, packed up the campsite and moved out across the valley towards the light.
 

Cat' Lair

Red alert sounded waking Tygra out of a sound sleep. His heart going a mile a minute, he ran toward the control room. The main viewscreen was already on and focused on the terminus of the gun. The library computers were overlaying the Lair's information on the planet on the viewscreen. "The Planet of the Snarfs? Why?" he thought without a full understanding of what was happening. His fingers flying over the keyboard he asked the computers for a full breakdown of what was going on. Of all the numbers that the computers threw up on the screen nothing except the average temperature of the planet showed anything out of the ordinary. The temperature display was dropping like a rock. On a whim he called up the weather satellites that were orbiting the planet. What he saw in the resulting data was not encourging. Tygra got the communicators, hoping to raise someone on the doomed planet.

"Cat's Lair to Planet of Snarfs, come in please." He was rewarded with static. He tried boosting the power of the communications system to maximum. Again, nothing. That's when he saw the half finished communicators Lion-O had started. He ran to Snarf's old room. Halfway there he stopped. That was broken as well, there were no parts that would fit and it would take to long to rig up something that worked. Defeated by primitive snarfian technology, he walked back to the control room. Tygra could only watch whatever was happening to the planet.