The full weight of what had happened dawned on Kara.His spirit was filled with a sense of shame and his mind reeled in a stream of unanswerable questions that repeated over and over.‘What could have happened?’ ‘What could I have done?’‘How could I have helped?’‘Who will teach us now?’ and, strangest of all, ‘What will his family do?’He had never had really thought of such things before -- all his life his future was assured, his livelihood inherited without care to his merits or qualifications.While others had to work and toil to support themselves and the city, his time was idled away in play.While others had to struggle to earn their respect, his fame would be handed down to him as if by the gods above.

A bad taste came to his mouth, dry and sticky, perhaps it had always been that way, perhaps not, it was only then that he noticed it.

Out in an open-air courtyard of concrete and steel, the males of various species filed past him with hardly a glance to the side -- except for Marcelus who waved a warm good-bye.That group was headed to a nearby recreation room.Soon the girls would follow them there but for the moment they were gathered around the unfrilled banks that surrounded a series of red-marble pillars.The females were discussing something, something tawdry and gossipy.Every so often one of them would sneak a wicked glance at the lion-cub.

Kara paced about mindlessly, lost in a world of his own creation.

A hand touched his robed back.He turned to see -- it was Mesilina.Agripina was already strutting up to him, too.

“It’s a shame what happened back there,” the Warrior Maiden began.

He nodded, his mind still somewhat numbed.

“Thrax was such a cute-looking tiger, too.”She rubbed her hands over his exposed biceps that had oddly begun to develop lately.His fur was short and soft, his flesh was untensed.

“Yes, he was, I mean,” he caught himself in a trap of the tongue, “it is a shame.”

The girls about the red columns giggled uncontrollably, their hands covering their curled lips.

“You want to come to the garden later?”

“I --”

“He can’t,” the lioness said, catching her breath.“He’s going to be busy today, aren’t you, Kara?”

“Um, um,” it was not nervousness but a caught-off-guard absentmindedness that caused him to trip over his words.“Marsala said my father wanted to see me later.”

“So you haven’t been told?”she pondered aloud, regretting the leak.

“Told me what?”

“No, um, never mind.”She grabbed Mesilina by the arm and all but dragged her back to the chattering girls who sat watch attentively from within the cool shade of the imposing, circular towers of crimson rock.

He watched the two fade back into the small mob, their faces and forms melting into an indiscernible obscurity of cruel viciousness -- eyes that stared, lips that laughed, fingers that pointed.He wondered how anyone at all could be attracted to that and, thoroughly repulsed, he recoiled from the scene before it could infest him with worser thoughts of vile and dread.But it was the feeling of self-consciousness that disturbed him more.He had experienced it unmasked already, that day he had snuck down to see Caesar so he knew full well that it was more than just the girl’s foul teasing, it permeated the entire society.

What was it?What could it be?

Across a hall and into an adjacent room, he hid and shut the door behind him.Out of breath from his hasty jog to cover, he paused there in the semi-darkness until he had regained his composure.

A single, square window, five feet in front of him, was the only source of light visible in that closet, that was cramped with an assortment of gray uniforms, the types the school custodians wore.He stepped silently to the glass, a slight but perceptible image of his face reflected off of the clear pane.But he paid no attention to the shadows and strange, new lines that had evolved around his features, instead he opened the portal, disappointed to find a thin, wire mesh on the other side.

The pressure difference across the boundary was substantial and a strong breeze leaked out of the room.A web-spinning spider shook violently in the current then fell onto the inner sill, its legs upward, fretting quickly in terror until it had uprighted itself.The minuscule creature scurried to the corner where it was safe in the crevices.

Kara stared out of the window for what must have been forever -- his mane waving all the while until the current had at last waned.He stared in wonder and adoration at the immense structures of Metropolis: the ornate towers and solemn temples of titanic grandeur, the snakelike bridges and, catching his eye, were the small planes that hovered between buildings, taking their passengers from one part of Third Earth to another.He stared and as the minutes passed his attention sunk downward, to where light dimmed, to where shadow was ever-present.

He wanted to examine the depths, too, but the thin, immovable restrained kept him back.

But then, or he could look from afar or he could go there himself.

The lion removed his white robe, opting for a more humble attire.The clothes of a laborer would do just nicely in his plan.He searched the racks for a set of shorts his size then completed the outfit with a fluff, loose shirt.Ruffling his hair -- not that the wind had done little do dishevel it -- he snickered thinking that no one would recognize him in the made-up guise of Liono, his alter ego.

Carefully he opened the closet door and just casually came out while no one was watching.

He knew that Marsala had tightened security around the turbo-lifts so he had to find another course to the lower levels.The only thing that came to mind was the course that the driver had taken from Caesar’s hospital so he decided to backtrack along that trail.

Exiting the school, he strolled through an area of Metropolis that was very close to where the nobles officially resided -- the crests and colors of numerous, individual clans adorned the sky.Flags and other symbolic decorations hung from the bases of buildings, flapping over the horizontal, glass squares that protected the streets from the elements.Around him were crowds of businessman in hats who were too busy arguing stock prices to have bothered to notice him -- his invisibility was, in a way, reassuring.

A turn into a corner brought him before what looked like a religious temple.Tall, wide columns, evenly spaced, supported a triangular roof of rough granite.Carved faces, protruding heads -- lion heads, almost reminiscent of throwbacks in character, the areas around their snarled mouths corroded green -- sitting over the pillars seemed to guard the establishment, frightening away those bothersome evil spirits that populated the worlds of ancient superstition.Throngs of people paraded into and out of its brass, revolving doors, the inscription over them identified the place to be a bank.

He stood on the foot of its spacious front steps in a kind of haze -- seeing it there so suddenly, abruptly, triggered a flood of forgotten memories.

He and his mother were walking down the very same steps -- it was morning and slants of orange sunlight diffracted through the array of unconquerable towers around them.She stopped him and they sat on the rocky edifices together.She gave him a candy bar and he opened it, breaking its soft, chocolate length into little, squares.

“Can I have some?” a voice asked and he turned around.

It was another boy, a human child with --

“Black hair and hazel eyes,” Kara said, grinning as he stood alone on the sidewalk.He shrugged and snapped out of it.“No, that’s impossible.That couldn’t have been her, that couldn’t have happened,” he concluded, reasoning that it must have been only an illusion, brought on by wishful thinking and hopeless romanticism.His mother had died in an accident after he was born, or so he was told and Marsala and his father would never lie to him, or so he believed.

It was a half hour of unnerving adventure on trains, on busses and on foot.He treaded around places of the city that he had never been in before.He was not completely afraid, not entirely confident.He found by experience that he had a great sense of direction.The deeper he went the more daring he became and he got to a point where he no longer stopped to look up or hesitate to go on.The freedom, the urge to roam through the wilderness, it was in his blood, in his nature and it was coming out then and there as though it did not matter how long it had been buried or suppressed by the mores of his adult superiors.

Almost exhausted, young Kara finally reached the automatic sliding doors of the small hospital.A massive storm cloud over the tops of overhead-highways -- swift winds galed across the streets -- it had already begun to drizzle and the light wetness added an extra dimension to the lion’s unkept appearance.The small lobby the entrance emptied into was lit by the soft glow of ceiling lamps.He was drawn to the back where he found a reception desk -- yet he saw no one, no one anywhere.

He stopped to study the nameplate on the tabletop.“Doctor Z --”

“Why, hello,” a feline voice prompted.

He put the nameplate back, running a hand across his face, through his mane nervously until he recognized the source of the intrusion -- the cheetah doctor he had seen there before.

“Hi,” he said.

She eyed him suspiciously until she, too, was able to recognize him.“Hey, you’re that Liono Caesar found the other day.”

“Yes, that’s me.”He grinned, not really wanting to.“Is he around?”

She pressed the pen she was holding up to her lip then, realizing that she was holding it, she slit it into the top of her clipboard where it was meant to go anyway.“Not today.He’s in the lower levels today.”

“The lower levels?”

“Yup, where the, er, throwbacks live,” she acted as if embarrassed by the word, not so much because of the word but because of who she was saying it to.“He’s checking up on them.He’ll be here tomorrow, if you’d like to --”

He sighed silently.“How does one get down there?”

The cheetah was somewhat shocked by the question, mostly because no one had ever asked her that.“Not too sure myself, never been to the underworld.You could try looking though the power stations nearby, I believe that’s where Caesar goes to, they should connect to the surface.”

Kara nodded and she excused herself.She had things to file, she said and, with a flash of fading, blue, yellow, he found himself alone, staggering to the exit.He wanted to shrink into the corner and cry.He felt lost and alone, thinking for a moment that his fantasy world had come tumbling down to a bleak reality.

Outside he sniffed the cold, metallic air -- thunder crashed above and the snaking, twisting flashes of lightning caught his attention.Watching the macarbe spectacle from the safety of a concrete overhang, he tried to reason a plan.He had come along way and he did not want to quite, not when he had come so close.

Still, even if he could get to the power stations -- where ever they were -- there was no guarantee that he would ever be able to find Caesar in that infernal underworld.He had glimpsed only a portion of it earlier but even that little bit was enough to tell him what odds he was up against.

He stepped out of the safety of the dry shade and let the rainwater -- warm and rich with ashy particles -- intermingle with the strands of his red mane.Resolved despite it all, if there was a way down there, then he was going to find it.Even if he could not reach the ‘silly’ human, he smiled, he was determined at the lest to learn more about that oft-ignored and misunderstood part of Metropolis -- its subterranean, mechanic heart.