Breathing was exhausting, talking was painful and even something as simple as looking at Pumalo while he worked the machine aggravated his bleak and dreary disposition -- and that, more than anything, bothered him because he wanted to be helpful but it was as though an invisible hand, cold and omnipotent, was holding him back, keeping him at bay.

Still, he was able to make the most of his predicament.He noted the exact position of Pumalo’s post with respect to the others.He memorized the shape and contour of the general area.He poked his head out of the alcove into the corridor, discretely mapping, forming in his mind a rough outline of the path he had taken from where he had entered the scene to where he was at that very moment.

He turned his attention, his keen eyes and sharp mind to the large puma.He studied the burly feline’s body, his movements, responses and reaction.The gripping distortion of his hands, the tensing of his flexed arms.His chest heaved as he panted the stale air, his legs bucked as he tried to support his massive musculature.

The puma was beautiful, he thought to himself, rapt in the figure’s raw and dripping masculinity.

Kara crawled from the corner to Pumalo’s side.He patted the throwback’s ribs, calling his attention -- the grown-up cat, startled free from his repetitious trance, crouched down to be closer to the cub’s level.Seeing how badly his friend was sweating, he took off his shirt and used the gray rags to dry the puma’s face.Continuing to work without protest, he indicated to the lion with moans and slight grunts that his shoulders and back needed a bit of massaging.

“I’m better now,” he whispered.“Let me have another turn at it.”

Pumalo was about to speak but at that instant the rotating arms of the relay froze and the lights on its edge shut off -- the youngster was shocked and inched from the machine to the cover of the corner, afraid that his presence had been detected.“The shift’s ended,” the malformed Thunderian said, comforting the lion.“It means we can go now.”

A whistle rung and as its din echoed and vibrated through the tunnels, thick, ashy smog engulfed the hives.Itchy eyes watery, his vision was obscured -- he could feel but not see the puma’s injured arm drape across his naked back.Flesh on flesh touching, the Thundercat sensed sore muscles twitching, hot hide pulsating and, held in that manner, he was led from the relay station, through the murky haze, to the center of the hall where leery, exhausted workers had already come together.

“Just stick with me,” Pumalo said.While with one arm he had the cub in a tight embrace, with the other he dried his sweat with the crumpled shirt that the youth had been wearing.“We’re not really going to follow these guys,” he leaned into the lion’s ears, “but we’re going to have to make it look that way.”

Following the gentle nudging and prodding of the large cat’s silent directions, he was led blindly through passages so dark, so indistinct with shadow that, had he tried, he could not have been able to tell where he was, where he was going.Kara held his head down, kept his eyes fixed on the ground.He could see the back of legs and his and the puma’s feet.

He was not aware of the sweeping change until enough time had passed for his weakened senses to adjust.Only too late he realized that he was no longer on a line, shuffling off slowly to the distance, pressing, body to body, with the workers in that inhospitable heat.Unnerved, his head arched up and he looked around him but it was the blackness of deep, formless shadows that greeted him.

Kara was in a tunnel, thin and cramped, its rough walls, neither metal nor concrete, was made of dirt and stone that crumbled in his fingers.No one was in front of him, no one was at his side and, to his horror, Pumalo’s intimate hold had lifted.He wanted to scream but at the last moment he heard that voice again, gruff and commanding.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m still here,” the large cat cupped the youth’s shoulder, guarding him.

He was in a tight passage, walking in the lead with the throwback immediately him.He slowed his pace until the puma just slightly bumped his back.He grinned, reassured that indeed he was not alone.

“We’ll be there shortly, cub, don’t worry about it.”

The puma reached up and quickly pulled down from his neck the dry shirt he had lain across his back and, teasingly, wrapped it around the lion’s shoulders.

“Who is that?” a new, unfamiliar voice asked.

Kara wanted to turn back to see who it was but dared not make too much of a scene.

“He’s new,” Pumalo answered.“But he’s all right, though.”

The tunnel was sloped but early on the effect was unnoticeable.It was not until the marched had dragged on and on that the downward inclination was made quite pronounced.He found that it was hard to walk at a deliberate pace but, with his friend holding and direction him, he was able to stay stead and on track.

“Just keep your head low,” he whispered.“Sit behind me when we get there.I’ll get a spot in the back where it’ll be safe.”

The vented air in the clustered path was cool and circulated very strongly.His mane was ruffled and his exposed fur was singed with the dust and fallen soil that the wind had whipped up in its wake.He coughed and rubbed his eyes, his face -- oddly, his features were tender and beyond that they did not even feel like themselves.He was struck by wild, bizarre sensations and, exploring the details of his head, the strangeness intensified.His brow, his nose, his lips were at once both like himself and not himself, neither one, nor the other but a new and unknown amalgam, a bone-chilling mixture.

The slope of the floor flattened and with that sudden and dramatic change even the nature of the passage had been altered.No longer constricting and claustrophobic, the tunnel had grown, amplifying in height and breath, to the proportions of a stadium-sized cavern.Lights, dim and smoky blue, evolved from the distance along with a series of moving shadows.Sounds, fierce but tempered, bellowed from a makeshift stage.

Kara and Pumalo separated from the small line of throwbacks that had been behind them to the rear of the meeting chamber.Wall to wall the area was full of workers, clad in sooty, ripped clothes, others outright naked, sitting on the dirt of the earthen floor, listening to the group of three speakers assembled before them.The faces of the deformed Thunderians were protected by shadows -- he, too, was covered by darkness and he found that in the recesses of the chamber, hovering over the puma’s back, peeking through his brownish mane, that he was safe and anonymous.

The cavern was not natural, it had been dug out of incomplete excavation site.Jetting out of the extremes were a pair of collapsed rows of concrete, it had rectangular, metal parts and features that though mangled and distorted by time, still retained enough of its original character to suggest to the lion-cub -- as it had to the rest present -- that the ruins were of elbowed arms complete with clawed toes, the paws open, the hollow ‘palms’ up.Connected to the architectural limbs was what was left of an equally artificial, sculpted torso.Gnarled, iron beams and frayed, uneroded wires poked out of obscure gashes.

The three speakers were up close to the audience -- the felines who had gathered all round the ruins -- and talked around a miraculously-intact head.

A cat head -- with rounded ears and ancient features -- of blue stonework and red eyes.

It was Cat’s Lair, the very Cat’s Lair of ancient myth and as the knowledge of it dawned on Kara, he sat aback, oblivious to what the three at the center were saying, until he recognized one of them to be his black-haired, hazel-eyed god.

“-- And they say,” said a throwback -- half tiger, half lion, “that we are not men, that we are not worthy, unfit to live among them.They say those things and more and they act as if they were the masters of this world.I ask you, what is Metropolis without these?” he raised his hands, shaking his extended fingers before his face.“Isn’t it this that power this city?This that feed the machines?We slave and work our lives away in bitter, tearless toil while they,” with one finger he pointed up -- to the arched ceiling, propped by makeshift, rotted beams of wood, “waste their lives enjoying the benefits of our labor for free, without care or obligation, thinking, in the heights of their arrogance, that all of this is but granted, given, as if manna from the gods.Let their bodies rot to meager weaklings -- at the end just who is the slave and who is the master?I tell you this, the people of Metropolis are the only ones in this picture that consume with out producing.What do those Thundercats and Amazonians do?Do they dig the coal, do they scavenge for oil?Are they strong enough to lift the heaviest axle?Are they agile enough to work for ten hours without rest?Fast to keep pace with the relays, quick to know their way around a sputtering dynamo?Yet they are our lords and master?They set us to work and give us the bare minimum that we need to survive.They call us inferior -- then let them do the work for us, if they are so much better.They say we are expendable, then let them come down and kill us all, if we’re not needed.No, they say a lot of things but they don’t do them, they wouldn’t dare.They need us, far, far more than we need them.I ask you again, who is the slave and who is the master?It is about time that we awake and realize our true importance in this society.”

The black and gray tiger waved his hand and turned to face his two, fellow speakers, indicating to them and to all that his speech had ended.The assembled masses applauded, except Kara and Pumalo, who had not listed to the whole oration and who did not want to draw any attention to themselves.The lion-cub sat next to the massive, crossed legs of the grown-up cat, his gaze transfixed, his attention unwavering.

Caesar stepped into the center stage of ruins and, without clearing his throat, he began to talk to the weary, tired assembly.“A long time ago, before there was anything called Metropolis, before the Thundercats had arrived on Third Earth, a time so remote, so distant that even the Amazonians did not exist, this planet was green with forests, blue with open skies.Rivers snaked across the land and lakes reflected upon their pristine surfaces the snowcapped peaks of ageless mountains.All of this was once like that and though the world is now replete with waste and excess, yet even in this rotting hell the seed of that primordial earth remains, ready to be unlocked and roam free once more.It exists -- it must -- there, where ancient memories fade and maps dissolve into borderless obscurity, there where the walls of this city stop and the tyranny of its masters cannot reach, that wilderness lives.My story takes place in a place like that, in times untamed.”

Kara rubbed his forefingers around his temples -- a slight hum had come to his head as he began to picture the scene, the story that the man was slowly, deliberately unfolding.Clans, different clans had come together on a flat, fertile plane.The people wanted to rectify the bonds that had once connected them with each other but that time and decay had torn asunder.Desperate, they decided to build a tower to reach the gods and ask them to show the way.

The people worked on the tower, year after year, decade after decade, until there came a time when they had forgotten what they were building it for.But by then the labor had become so ingrained, so all-consuming that it had transformed from a means to an end, to an end in itself.The leaders assumed the guise of the deities and the work went on for the sake of work that served no purpose but to keep the commoners busy and backward.Higher and higher still the tower rose -- and then one day the workers realized the intentions of their masters --

The lion reeled at the image that had come to him.At once a heavenly, ivory edifice, spiraled with flowered ivies, furled with touches of red marble, succame to a hollow shell, burning and smoking, crumbling and shaking.Onlookers run aghast, ground quaking, heavens tumulting.

“There must be an understanding,” Caesar concluded, “but there is hope for the future --”

“We can wait,” a voice called out from the audience, “but not forever.”

A sprinkle of sand and brittle, decayed vegetation fell from the lofty heights of the vast chamber to its floor, amid the congregated rabble of workers, a drop of almost fifty feet.In the applause that followed the human’s speech no one had noticed the subtle disturbance in the scene, no one had cared enough even to look up.And even if they had, they would not have seen much beyond the fog and haze that the darkness had made of the ceiling -- rather, it was more a question of who was watching them.

“I have had enough,” Phaeton winced and stepped back from the hole on the wooden-flanked flooring.He was in a tunnel that ran above the worker’s arena, a segment of a network of passages that had been dug intending to mark the start of a new dig but that red-tape and a lack of funds had put to an end.“I know now what’s been going on.”The old lion crawled from the perilous, overlooking hole to the safety of the solid rock.

“They’re just words, sire,” the doctor said, helping him up to his feet.He had not remained at the edge of the hole for long as soon as he realized how far and deadly fall down could have been.Heights were a problem for the half-breed’s weakened sense of balance.“Nothing can come of talk, it never has, it never will.I’m sure scenes like this have been playing out for centuries.”

“Perhaps,” the Lord of the Thundercats rubbed the soil off of his hands.“Perhaps.”

In a vaulted chamber of rock and stone, not too far from the ruins of Cat’s Lair, a red-robed figure approached a calm, tranquil pool -- a withered face reflected upon the waters, red eyes aglow --

The lion looked back to the hole, his face contorted in a puzzled look.He thought he had heard a maniacal laughter -- dry and harsh -- he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the momentary distraction.A thought had just then occurred to him -- “But now, now we can do something about it.”Plans and schemes, sinister in absolute nature, percolated and formed in his mind, emerging to the light of reason from fragmented ideas.“Make the robot look like him,” he said, pointing back to the hole, “that human, Caesar.Marsala told me about him -- he works with the throwbacks.”He grabbed the doctor’s arms and rambled on: “Let the robot rile the workers to revolt -- to discredit him and them -- I crush the rebellion and in so doing gather the support I need among the people to consider --”

“To consider the extermination of the workers --”

“Workers we replace with your man-machines.”

“I want it done soon, as soon as possible.”

“And what should we do to him?To the real Caesar?”

“Leave him to me,” he answered, letting go and passing the tiger, human half-breed, “there are methods.”He covered his eyes with the night-goggles.“I’ll find my way through the tunnels,” he said, vanishing, assuring himself of his good sense of direction.“Until next time, doctor.”

Algernon nodded and again turned to face the square hole -- the audience was up on its feet, shuffling out of the area.The speakers conversed among themselves and with others who had stayed behind for idle chatter.He folded the scraps of marked linens into his pocket, thinking silently --

In the darkness, Kara and Pumalo watched the workers stand and shuffle toward the surrounding tunnels, returning to the hives that consumed their lives.At the center of the cavern, where the hazy light was focused, Caesar talked with the two, throwback speakers, hugging them and stroking their arms.He gave them what appeared to be old, thin volumes, ancient books small enough to hide in the folds of their clothes.As the last of the audience left and as the feline orators followed them out, the pair in the back of the site finally stepped forward to meet him.

Caesar took notice of them as they emerged into the light.“How did you get down here?” he asked as he reached the lion.“How --”

“I was curious, so I -- well, I,” he grinned, looking at the puma, “it’s a long story.”He took hold of the man’s elbows and brought his arms around him in a low embrace.“I missed you, silly human.”

“You shouldn’t have,” he petted the lion’s red mane.The strands entangled in his fingers but gently he pulled away and the rough knots came undone.“You shouldn’t have come.What if someone had noticed you?What if your father --”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.”He snuggled his chin over the man’s shoulder, letting his hands wander the back of his shirt, feel his rippling, heaving muscles through the fabric, enter his tightening loincloth through the waistband.“I’m all right.And you?”

“I’ve had a great day,” he giggled.Breaking a bit back from Kara, he studied the Thunderian’s exposed chest with his eyes, his nimble fingertips tantalizing the furry flesh.As he patted the lion’s developing tone he felt him purr -- his eyes shut, his body quivered in the attention.He rubbed the underside of his chin and in response he arched his head to the side.“I’m having an even better one now.”

He took Caesar’s hands in his own -- “You spoke so beautifully.”He kissed the human’s palms, teasing him with his licking tongue.“I want you to pet me, pet me,” he pled.

“Hehehe,” he whispered a laugh and kissed the cat’s cheek.

“I love you, Caesar.”He licked the man’s lips, stopping their movement.

“You’re such a sweet, soft lion, Kara.Let me worship you.”He pet the lion’s back, gently squeezing, patting the soft, silky flesh.He brought their bodies together and completed their union with a deep kiss.“I absolutely love you.”

They paused for endless moments, feeling all the while that they were the only two people in the world.

“You can’t stay down here,” the human warned.“Can you get back to the surface?”

“I can bring him back,” Pumalo said, gruffly.He put a hand on the lion-cub’s shoulder and smiled.“I’ll take good care of him.”

“Be careful, you two,” he kissed the lion again, one last time.“Come back to the hospital tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be back then.”

Kara nodded and, heart-racing, eyes-watering, he broke from the object of desire and with one last good-bye he followed the puma into the tunnels.Yet he kept looking back to the human, who had remained in the center of the arena, until that moment when the distance and the cramped, passage conditions did not allow it.

He stopped and hugged the large cat, almost in tears.

“What’s the matter, cub?You’ll see him again,” he comforted the youth, patting his head and helping him put on his shirt.

“Will I see you again, Pumalo?”

In the darkness he grinned.“Hmmm, we are from different worlds, Kara, it wasn’t meant --”

“So what about the world -- you saved my life, I owe you everything.”

“No problem there, cub, now come on, we have to go before it’s too late for you.”

He picked the lion up and, much to the youth’s delight, carried him on his arms.

Close to his face, he studied the Pumalo’s features from the side.Noting its shape, its form, the character of the profile was familiar -- he just could not tell why, exactly.He rubbed under the throwback’s chin innocently, letting him purr loudly.It was the closeness that he craved and the grown-up cat was willing to give it -- and that was more than he could say about the adults in his life who had denied it to him for as long as he could remember.Yes, he saw something in the puma, something he had never seen even in his father.

Caesar touched the side of the severed head of the ruins of Cat’s Lair.He felt the burnt, charred surface of the porous stonework and, as the rough texture passed beneath his fingertips, he was drawn back -- back in time, to the distant past.He sighed, wishing that he had been born then and not now in that age of mechanical nature, mechanical life.The human stared into the crystal rubies of the carved feline’s captivating eyes, wondering to himself how things had gone wrong, so horribly wrong.

Saddened, he leaned supported against the figure.He was exhausted emotionally.He had wanted to spend more, much more time with Kara and regretted that he had to cut their meeting short but he could not escape his responsibilities.Meetings, discussions, concerns with the hospital, business with the throwback but tomorrow -- he told himself -- he would have the whole afternoon free for himself and his lion.

His lion -- his lion, the very thought that he had, to hold and to worship, such a gorgeous creature put a smile to his face and suddenly, unexpectedly, the gray, bleak world brightened and the hours of dreadful tedium ahead of him no longer felt like eternity.

Distracted by the inner fantasies of his mind, he noticed too late that he was not alone in the cave.Footsteps echoed in the surrounding darkness -- soil sprayed across the ground by the action of an awkward gait but he saw no shape, no form in the shadow.Alarmed, he ducked behind the fallen head but it was of no use.Who or what ever it was out there laughed dryly and with that cackle killed spotlights.

Caesar was cast in absolute darkness and, having reacted so irrationally, he had at that moment lost his sense of orientation.All he had to work with was the stone and concrete head of Cat’s Lair and his memory’s vague recollection of its position with respect to the rest of the area, its alcoves and side passages.Silently he stood and stepped around the figure, keeping his right hand on it.He heard again those heavy, low footsteps and the chilling sound of sand and soil spreading in its advance.

Advance?His heart pounded -- the disturbance did not come from one place or one general location but from random and indistinct spots all over and around the cavern.

He stopped -- he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.A presence hovered directly behind him.He could sense the breathing, the radiating heat of the body of the unseen stranger.Knowing that every moment could be his last, he thought that if he could run straight from the Thundercat ruins and reach the distant wall of the excavation site, then he could feel his way through the area, find a tunnel entrance and escape to a safer place -- a place with more light.But before he had even stepped one foot forward into his plan an arm wrapped around his chest and a hand gripped his jaw shut.

In the short struggle that followed he tried to bite the interloper’s furry hand but it was too little, too late.His head was smashed against a pillar of metal and concrete.At once his mind went blank and the world ceased to be.