[Part One]

A tall, gnarled tree with bushy green leaves swayed suddenly but not in the breeze. Roars and howls came from elsewhere below and that was quickly followed by the unmistakable sounds of machinery. Some of the more overgrown branches that extended outwards parallel to the ground were pushed forward violently. Its own thin, soft offshoots ruffled together to produce a searing hiss. It then continued to bend unnaturally until at last it gave way, it snapped, it hung limply on the side of the bark of the tree by what shards of connective wood was still left. Birds flew into the air, animals that had remained on the main branch fell to the ground and just as swiftly as the rest scrambled into the darkened safety of the underbrush.

Only then did the image of the ravaging vehicle come into view. Shinny gray with full red-black colorings and tank-treads for propulsion. Its actual physical form was more-or-less teardrop oval but that the front end was blunted and that the back end was pointed. Four mechanical arms stuck out folded over the roof and where ever the vehicle moved around anything in the way of those tendrils was knocked to the ground.

From a window over the Thundercat insignia, two passengers were clearly visible, basked in the orange glow of interior light.

"Really, you should learn to be more careful," Pumyra said.

"Careful? We’re already headed into a minefield and you want me to be more careful?" Bengali responded sarcastically.

"What is it with you? What’s the problem that you never think with your head?" Bengali smiled at her. She looked at him in shock, she could have slapped him. "Why can’t you be more like Tygra?"

"Then who would come to you bed at night?"

"And what was that supposed to mean?"

The white tiger was silent.

"You know they could be listening in."

"No, they’re not."

"There, that’s exactly it! If you only used your brain --"

The think forests cleared into a bright field of chewed grass. The unicorns must have been around or perhaps that was what the mutants had wanted others to think. Certainly the flat plain was innocent, too innocent.

A thin breeze blew overhead that only intermittently gusted into an audible gale within the cabin of the vehicle. The wet blades of grass danced in unison to the torrents.

Bengali looked at Pumyra once again after she had finished her lecture complete with wagged finger. "My dear, if it seems that I have faults know that I myself have put them there so as to not overwhelm you with my perfection."

"Oh, by Jagga, he’s lost it! You’ve been reading those plays Liono found --"

"Wrong!"

"Of course. The films. It would be quite an event the day you open a book to read it and not tear the pages for toilet paper."

"Not that again, that happened so long ago, Pumyra, we were children and besides, I did put the pages back, didn’t I?"

"I think only one of us grew up. We have serious work to do."

"Come on, I catch you looking. I know you want to. That’s all right, you can slide your hand over, no one will see what you do, down there."

"Well that would be -- no, no! What if some one finds out?"

Bengali laughed.

"Yes, what would you do? Bengali?" a voice crackled through the radio that had only then spurted to life.

The two Thundercats were shocked silly.

"Um, um, I, what, just what did you guys hear?"

"’Oh, touch me, Pumyra, touch me,’" Tygra mocked uncharacteristically.

"Quite a mouthful," Panthro added his two cents in.

"So what about you being more like Tygra, Bengali?" Pumyra asked.

He looked at her with his eyes wide open: "Remind me again which one of us grew up."

"I see, so your big mouth’s one of those ‘faults’ you installed yourself? Good, that’s good, I could have never seen your omnipotence under it, under that disguise. You’re quite a --"

"Enjoy it why don’t you. I think you protest just too much, just a little too much. I’ve never had any complaints before."

She petted him softly, almost in pity she spoke: "’Cause your hand can’t speak."

"The lady’s sharp on her wits today, ain’t she, Bengali?" Panthro asked.

"Hey, we should watch what we say around Liono," Tygra said.

"I’m not a child," he paused, "well, I'm not," Liono finished.

"Oh, never mind," Panthro broke in -- he fought back the laughter -- "can you see the trail through the fields?"

"Yes, we can," said Pumyra.

"We cleared most of it out ourselves already. It’ll be safe for you to cross through that trail. We’re all the way at the other side. I don’t know if you can see us, but we can see you."

"I can see you well enough. You’ve waving your arms from behind those bushes," Bengali said at length, calm once more. "Have there been any signs of the mutants in the vicinity?"

"No, the early warning detectors haven’t gone off yet, but I’m sure they’ll be back, they know we’re here and they’ll try something soon."

[Part Two]

Deep in the afternoon the Thundercats had been skillfully able to clear the terrain of most of the land mines. The only parts that remained hazardous were confined to a wide tract of land that jetted into the forests in the east. Close to desert and to wasteland, there was very little danger that someone would be harmed by the presence of those buried devices of Plunderian cowardice.

The weather had chilled though the winds had died considerably. The clouds that had formed a dense overcast for the better parts of the day had disappeared entirely. In the distance Liono heard the telltale sound of thunder though no one saw that lightning. Immediately he ordered the Thundercats back into the vehicles. Pumyra and Bengali, Panthro and Tygra in the respective mine sweepers while the Lord took refuse in the Thunder Tank.

Suddenly and from nothing, from the thin air the rain poured hard, fast and instantly the bright sun had acome to the pitch darkness of shadow. For a while the only lights came from the bolts from above. Bengali watched while the view from the windshield of his vehicle became totally obscured by the torrents of water that splashed across the glass. His foggy breath did not help either. He turned to his left and found Pumyra on the floor, the cold metal floor behind the swivel chairs. She shivered and he went down to her side and cuddled her in his arms. She rubbed his fur lightly -- her hands were almost frozen. Gingerly he took hers into his own until they were warm. She turned around briskly and looked straight into his sparkling blue eyes.

"I don’t like the looks of his," Liono’s voice broke through the radio.

"We can’t do much more for today," Panthro began, he held up the receiver to his lips, "Tygra says that the storm won’t go away until well after sundown."

In the back of the cab of the minesweeper the tiger looked attentive and placed the thin book he was reading down onto his lap.

"There’s no question that the mutants will come back and monkey around with what we’ve done here."

"Yes, we have to expect that," Liono said.

"Someone should stay behind just in case," Tygra said from behind. He arose and headed toward that front of the cab and sat himself next to Panthro.

The world outside was incoherent: the masses of trees and of clouds blended together in a black blob that swayed and quivered with no perceptible boundary to separate where the jungles ended and the skies began.

"I’ll stay behind."

"No, Tygra’s needed back in the lair to monitor the situation," Panthro spoke swiftly, "I’ll stay behind."

Liono was silent for a while.

The two Thundercats looked at each other nervously. Radio silence could have only meant one thing.

"All right," Liono said at last, in the faint background of the audio hiss all could hear him rehilt the Sword of Omens, "we’re going back to Cat’s Lair. We’ve done as much as we could do today. Panthro’s staying behind with the minesweepers. Let’s move those vehicles to the boarder between the clearing and the forests where the Thunder Tank is."

Although there was no visibility the navigation systems were able to move the tall vehicles into safety. The ground was muddy and having been dug up twice it was more than kindly loose and running. No vehicle lost traction but there were close calls when deep pools of water began to develop.

The Thundercats, except Panthro, opened an access hatch on the floor of the minesweepers, pulled it up and over and eagerly climbed down and under the vehicles. Though water did splash in their faces, the great bulk of the minesweepers protected them from the torrential downpour. Bengali was busy adjusting his clothes, Pumyra’s hair was more than usually disheveled. Tygra was about to go back up the ladder to fetch his book when Liono arrived with the Thunder Tank. The bright headlights hurt the cat’s eyes and some looked away, hands over faces though to hide in shame -- quickly they darted into that all-purpose vehicle.

Two thunderbolts echoed and resonated. The assault had taken place in the mine-ridded area. The sound of the miscellaneous explosions was muffled by the onrush of deafening thunder. Several trees burst into flames bunt the falling water did much to kill the fire.

"By the time you get back to Cat’s Lair," Panthro said, "the storm should have passed the area. At least I hope so, but still, the rain should do much to keep the mutants away, you know what they think of water -- oh --" he stopped himself at the moment that he was ready to bust into laughter.

He saw Tygra’s book on the floor just then, the bookmark was next to it, he was about ready to pick it up when --

"If the mutants do show up?"

"Don’t you worry about me."

With that the radio communication ended. Panthro put the receiver transmitter unit back next to the instrument panel and sat himself back on his chair. His eyes closed, his hands folded on his lap over his legs, he breathed deeply though in sleep but nothing rested in him at all. He hoped he had not put his foot into his mouth, he hoped he had not made a fool of himself -- or worse -- of his friend.

Tygra.

The book.

He thumbed through the pages under the dim light from a small, yellow fixture above.

[Part Three]

Panthro was utterly lost in thought to notice the moment when it happened but the rain did stop and the air returned to a more normal, to a more temperate state. At first he saw that the windshield was clear and dry, then the orange of sunset. Down the hatch, down the ladder to the wet earth, stars were visible while his shadow elongated out and out into the trees beyond and then the light was gone and it was night.

Everywhere, forever, for as far as the eye could see the vast sky-dome was spread with night time darkness. There was no cloud in sight, there was no moon. At first there was silence, broken only by the hooting owls in the trees, at first the heavens were dotted only in a galaxy of dim stars.

Panthro was about to climb back up into the minesweeper when a great burst of orange light burst in the distance over the swayed and the jagged tree tops. The soaring, the screeching howl it caused pierced the air though it was a thousand tornados melded into one horrid and impossible form.

The panther fell to the ground with his whole arms over and around his ears to try to stop his hearing of it, the pain of it. He thought his head would shatter and burst. The minesweepers, the trees, the rocks, the very ground itself vibrated, resonated in the oncoming wake for the sun-bright object was getting closer.

Sprawled on the ground, bouncing in chaos out of control he saw that a metal body or at the least the outline of a metal body within the tumultuous orange cloud that streaked through the air. "It’s a ship," he said but his voice was lost completely in that sonority. "It’s going to crash into the clearing!" He tried to get up but the muddy loose soil was already too unstable. He could stand only by holding onto one of the track treads of the minesweeper.

The ground shook so violently that what was left of the uncovered mines exploded spontaneously in dense dirt clouds. Rocks, pebbles and shrapnel spewed into the air in all conceivable directions. Panthro only noticed that by the cleared distant visuals unobstructed by the growing orange light for even the sounds of those blasts were inaudible. His head rang like a doorbell, like the inside of a doorbell. He felt sick all over though the clamor alone could grind his body into dust. His ears bled, his eyes, his nose.

He ducked under the minesweeper for cover.

From another part of the horizon three small, red objects zoomed into the air. Hidden in place, even Panthro could see it. "Fire balls from castle Plundarr," he muttered under his breath, "perhaps this was their plan, perhaps this was what they had in mind all along." Two of the fireballs passed the approaching orange cloud unmolested -- the trajectory assured that they would land in Amazonian territory for no more, for no less that the pleasure of off-the-side damage.

But the last fire ball hit it’s target.

The spaceship that had up the that time been almost totally obscured turned suddenly to the right, it groaned while it veered off course. What ever had caused the appearance of that orange cloud the red fire ball had put to an end. The gray-metal vehicle was naked and unprotected. No new fireballs came from the mutants -- there was no need for more. The ship’s path had been adequately deflected to land in that patch of the clearing where the most land mines remained.

"The defenseless souls!"

He jumped out from under cover ashamed of his own show of cowardice and incensed beyond reason. He saw the ship side-on as it quickly, as it steadily came down, closer, closer to careen to its doom. When the nose touched down in the dirt one violent upheaval followed the other. In the thick and smoky haze, perpetuated by both the substantive action of the crash and of the explosions of the land mines, the vehicle was again enshrouded and obscured.

Until the end, until it stopped, the ship was tilted above the mangled ground at an acute angle. The mines had done little damage to the upper parts of the hull but the lower half was scattered in oblong and in sharply obtuse pieces everywhere along the battered earth.

Immediately and impulsively Panthro began to run to it -- for he could hear in the newfound tranquility of relative silence the cries of help and terror from within the ship but only a few feet from the minesweeper the smashed vehicle exploded. He shut his eyes, he could not see the pane of glass that fell down from the sky to his head. He fell over onto his side amidst the shattered fragments, neither cut, neither harmed -- not physically anyways.

[Part Four]

Somehow it happened, somehow his eyes could open once more and he could see. The rest of his senses returned not gradually, not all at once but in quantum packets. Hearing, taste, smell, even the sense of touch was an oddity. First cold, hot second, then he could differentiate between smooth and rough, soft and hard -- only pain came at the end. And what pain -- he groaned loudly and the sound of his own voice frightened him.

He had never heard it before -- his own voice -- he realized then, indeed, the he had not only never heard his voice but that he had no recollection of that sense at all. Of that sense or on any other sense what so ever.

He explored his body -- he had no idea what it was, what the parts were for. He saw that he was gray and that was strange because up to that moment when he looked at his fur the idea of ‘gray’ never existed. Then there was the idea of ‘fur.’

Ah, but then, but then and in a moment of terror at last he came upon. That ‘he’ was this, that ‘he’ was that, he realized that ‘was’ that he ‘existed,’ that he was an ‘I.’ Worse still -- that he was alone.

In those initial, tentative moments he had made a thousand discoveries and after all that he was numb to the newness of the universe, he simply let the knowledge sink in and accepted it. He accepted without question that he was separate, that he was no longer at piece.

Yet, even yet he wondered, he tried to formulate the words but there were no words, there was no language, there could be in language -- only mind -- for everything had been reduced to the animalistic, the rudimentary, to its absolute minimal simplicity.

His body was covered in clothing but he could not understand the purpose of it. So he found a way to peel it off. Around his waist was a large, red-black insignia with an unusual figure carved into the object but because even the he could give no meaning or use too he threw it away. He arose and stepped to the side -- his foot came to rest over something pointy and jagged. He yelled in pain and darted back. On the ground he coward and he looked at his injury. It bled and somehow he knew it was not good but he did not know what to do.

When the pain alleviated he looked to where he had stepped and found that on the ground was the most curious object yet. Two sticks with carved designs of the ends, one red, one blue connected by a chain. One of the ornate ends was wet with blood from where it had imbedded itself into his flesh. He understood what had happened and so realized he would have to be more, far more careful.

The bleeding on and around the wound further lessened in a dense and adhesive built up. He tried to stand and to walk in a manner that he though was normal but his foot pained miserably every time the sole pressed against the ground. What he ended up doing passed for a pronounced limp -- so unstable that he crashed against a hard metal surface. He raised his head and looked upon it: that same red-black insignia was on the massive construction but it was different from he disk he had pulled off himself, it was not carved into the substance. But then to the business of that huge object -- there were two of them and he did not know what to make of it.

An explosion and by instinct he hid his head in cover. Objects fell onto the ground around him and he scrambled for cover in the safety around the two large metal objects. He looked out to the distance where the disturbance had come from, where most of the light came from large fires flamed from within the mangled carcass of a fallen spaceship. It was large and though the fires danced in the currents of the breezes the structure itself did not move or waver.

He approached with caution mindful that at any moment he could be faced by another sudden explosion. There was a large metal section where there were no fires at the end half-in, half-out of the ground. He walked to it, to the crash site that was nearly a thousand feet away in that unusual and in that painful gait.

When he arrived at the target he did not know what to do. The scene was calm for the most part, warm and silent. His curiosity satisfied he turned to head back to where he had come from then he heard something. Something shrill. He almost dismissed it for it did not sound again but when he did turn and took the first step the sound returned and louder and that second time it did not stop, it would not stop.

He was face to face with that section of the ship looking into the darkness. He could see nothing but there had to be something, there had to be something marking that noise. Inside the small, cramped space was littered with debris of all variety: glass, metal, components of technology in multiple, broken parts, papers and the sound of screaming.

He recognized it -- it was the stubborn and persistent shriek of terror.

[Part Five]

Explosions continued to destroy the read of the ship where the fuel and the engine had been. Crumpled and broken pieces of metal were sent hurtling into the air in a shower of after-shrapnel. Fires crested above and below the mangled wreck, noxious fumes and gases swarmed out, into the air in spiraling vortexes. All over everything was hot to the touch. The ship’s skin was made from gray-black tiles, some of which hung, loosely connected like scabs from the injured main body, some of which had evaporated into rust and ash that decomposed in his hands like an eraser undoing itself.

He entered the remains of the fallen vessel through a large but thin gash that had been cut across the underside of the hull by the action of the crash and the ensuing blasts. In the first room he encountered he found long, clear tubes scattered on the floor in pairs or in groups of threes connected laterally in riveted knots of spiny, metal tendons. On several tubes the glass was smashed broken and profusely obscured in dark soot -- whatever was inside them had burnt crisp very quickly. The heat was so great that even the glass began to bubble and deform in the process of melting. The other tubes that were not broken were filled with a dense, white vapor. The fires were so bright that he could faintly see something within the gasses.

He stood over one of those tubes that was still attached to the wall. Something alive within appeared from the oblivion of the mist and pressed its face against the glass cylinder. It pounded violently with its clenched firsts. Its flesh was badly burnt and readily peeled free from the body -- large chunks of skin remained adhered to the inner surface of the glass tube where it and intermixed blood boiled and bubbled. It screamed to the top of its lungs but all the cat could hear was a faint hum, a low rumble. He did try to help but it was no use, it all happened so fast. The figure inside burst into orange flames, burned and spewed ash then disappeared back down into the incoherent mass below the swirling gasses.

The cat screamed and stormed out of that chamber of horrors. He heard the shriek clearly once more -- he looked around in utter confusion. Pipes and bulkheads dangled dangerously from the beaten ceiling. The floor was patched full of holes from where he could see the bare, broken ground upon which the ship had crash-landed. It was hard to walk or just to move around not only because of his injury but because of the heat of the metal floor, the sharp objects as well as the shards of glass that littered everywhere, in ever conceivable nook.

One section of the ship seemed to have remained intact, somewhat intact. It was a passage from where dull, gray light emanated. The walls were lined with crumpled pipes -- water spewed forth in fountainous displays. The scream, the cry was more, much more desperate and so he ran in the height of terror. He came upon a large room that was apparently in design similar to the first room he had been in -- only not so destroyed. In that place the tubes were small, mostly and empty. Empty except for one.

It had been smashed but it was only partly open. The cat looked in -- a young boy was struggling to free himself. Glass was smeared around his face so he reached in to carefully remove the glimmering, shinning fragments. The child opened his eyes, screamed and tried to back away but the tube kept him confined in place.

That time he acted quickly, determined. He cleared what was left of the cylinder out of the way. The boy continued to scream, even after he was all but freed. The cat picked up the defenseless youngster and put him on the floor. In an instant when he was not looking the child ran into a passage that led deeper into what was left of the ship -- parts that continued to explode.

He followed for some unknown reason.

A large explosion, the vessel rocked, something yet unseen to him fell and the boy yelled once only. He stumbled upon an open hatch, crawled through a tight shaft of smooth, brown walls. A metal door lay on its side and beyond that was a control room, or what was left of the control room. Half of it had disintegrated, the rest was in flames.

To the right he saw what had happened. A support beam had fallen, diagonally across the floor and the boy was under it. The large pipe had hit him on the head and he saw silent and still. The cat gently rolled him from the heavy, fallen object. There did not appear to be any broken bones or other injuries, there was no bleeding and he breathed. He cradled him in his arms and calmly walked out of the ship.

The boy opened his eyes, tentatively at first and then he was bolder. He began to speak while explosions followed the hasty exit: "Acitauq a jeps elensaj osusaj elfereuq o irnuer bose serc lobranu. Od num led nifle, niflets a haida aidad ivatseed elased anerbosa dan."

He did not let his eye’s wander from the cat’s face. Calm and gentle juxtaposed amidst the tumultuous chaos, he felt safe and, before he knew it, he was out of the broken, fallen ship.

The fires were bright and lit the night sky in a yellow glow. The boy wondered about what had happened -- to him in particular but most of the events remained in a blur. He knew who he was and what he was for sure, it was just that he could not recall exactly what led up to his rescue. He felt hot and dizzy, for a few minutes he could not stand but after a while those unsettling sensations ceased.

The cat, meanwhile, kept the two near the vicinity of the huge vehicles in the recesses of the clearing, vehicles adorned with strange, red-black insignias. He would not let him approach them too closely though he was afraid of them at some fundamental level. The boy wondered if there might be some connection with it and with his savior. The vehicles were silent, motionless, not a light was on from inside, there was no perceptible danger.

He looked at his friend and approached him while he was seated on the green, grassy ground. He wrapped his arms around the cat. "O emo citag or natore uqet. Adi vimod avlass a em." He began to cry and his friend consoled him the best he could. The boy petted him, scratched him behind the ears to his delight. "Aro haim ed reca haveuq."

The cat had a large wound on his foot. The boy ripped off some of the fabric from the white cloths that clothed him. He wrapped it around the bleeding tightly. Blood continued to seep through the linen for a while but that soon eased and stopped altogether. His friend found that he could move more easily, with less pain.

He did not want to be around those two metal beasts anymore, he did not trust them. From the distance, from beyond the fallen spaceship the air echoed in a certain rumble. In his mind he could see rocks shatter under massive wheels, treads, similar to those that were on the metal vehicles. He was not about to stay there any longer.

He got up, took the boy by the hand and together walked into the darker portions of the forest where the only sounds came from the birds in the upper canopy and in the insects in the underbrush. The youngster did not protest though he could barely see where he was going. He trusted his new friend totally and he knew by instinct that the large cat would not hurt him. His friend did seem to know where he was going, even if he was not conscious of that.

After almost an hour hiking the two reached a wide, imposed tree that unlike the others had a ladder imbedded in the bark. The cat looked up, high, to the highest vista -- shadows, formless shadows were what he could see but there was an outline of something, of a platform. He took the boy in his arms, in a quasi-embrace, the youngster’s arms were around his neck to keep him from sliding or falling during the long, arduous ascent.

Much of the climb was a blur because the boy began to nod off. He did remember or recalled eventually reaching some sort of end to the ordeal yet again there was nothing to see but a vaporous nothingness. He could tell then that he was being taken across, around a floor of rough, wooden planks.

The gray cat put him down on that hard surface then curled around him to keep him warm because the air just then had a biting coldness to it. He remembered little else then he fell asleep, haunted by the passing, fleeting memories and visions of what had happened to him in that spaceship. His friend, too, was restless with the fragments -- broken, disordered and chaotic -- of his former life that his unsettled brain simply could not comprehend.

Birds of the night flew noisily from one branch to another. Flowered leaves that bloomed in the night swayed in the shiverous current to aromate the scene in the wild scents of dewy, green nature.

[Part Six]

No alarm sounded the coming of the new day, except perhaps, the soft, sharp rustling of the branches of the canopy above and below. The boy opened his eyes to see shadow only but not complete darkness. In disabling grogginess he was convinced that it was either still night or that it was obscenely early in the morning. Every so often, though, while entangled tree limbs and leaves shook in the wind, gaps of clear, blue sky were revealed to allow just enough light through -- just enough and no more.

Still on his back on the wooden floor he looked to the right to where his friend should have been. Should have been for instead all that he found were the shards of cloths he had torn off of himself the night before. The tight knot he had given it had been violently undone and it was stained with blood, red, dry blood with clumps of gray fur.

"O tag le?" he questioned -- he took the fabric in his hands and squeezed it in his grip for comfort. "O tag le?" that time his words were softer. "Sat seed nod?" that time his voice was below a whisper.

Saddened and alone, he held the crumpled fabric to his face. His eyes had welled up and he had to dry his tears somehow. He remembered little of the crash before his being trapped -- when the cat had saved him. Had he lost his friend, too?

"I uqasat se!"

No. No, his friend would not have left him. He was sure of it, he hoped for it. That was when he noticed that blood had come out of his nose during the night. It had dried in disintegrating flecks around his upper lip. The wound, what ever it was, seemed to have healed or at the least to have stopped for the moment.

He arose and on his feet -- he was a little dizzy but that feeling faded -- he walked along the wooden planks of the makeshift tree-house. The logs were old and, unprotected for so long, the boards were warped. While he treaded over them he noticed that they wobbled though loosened. At the very edge he stopped and he looked around: in a wide ranged arch for thirty feet ahead there was a great treeless gap where there were only branches, green, lusciously overgrown with leaves and intertwined with flowered vines. He could see nothing out further beyond that effective wall, nothing below -- rather he dared not look below.

A large portion of the sky opened momentarily. Three large, red birds flew in the light from one nest to another then began to call to untold and unseen others. With that the forest was alive again in activity.

He turned his head to hear in sudden awareness. Droplets of water trickled form flat, wide leaves burdened with dew and collected mist. The stream flowed over and through the floor boards noisily.

The boy walked once around the giant, brown trunk at the center of the hide-out but found no one, certainly not the particular cat he was searching for. He wanted to call out a name but he had none for his friend. Determined to find out what had happened none the less he discovered the escape hatch and lifted it to reveal a wooden ladder built into the bulk of the tree.

The night before it had actually been his friend and not he who had done the climbing. He was tentative as well as afraid for he knew that time he would have to do it all himself.

The ladder had no frame, it consisted of rectangular cutouts of wood nailed or screwed into the bark at roughly even, equal distances. For the most part the rungs were sturdy but every so often he encountered some that were gray, rotting to the point of total disintegration or others that were loose. The loose pieces themselves came in one of two types. Or the screws were not tight and the rungs would shake in his hands or the screws were jammed in unsturdy wood and the rungs would have come off entirely if he had held on the wrong way.

In the descent he never did look down -- not that it would have mattered. He noticed that the deeper he went the darker the world steadily became.

A large, flying insect appeared unexpectedly. It fluttered over and around his face, he could hear its wings flap, feel the short bursts of air the circulated in its wake. He scared the horrible intruder away with high-pitched screaming and with the swinging of his arms. When it finally disappeared he remained in place, motionless, to rest a while.

After several more minutes of careful climbing he reached down with his foot but he felt nothing -- at least not what he had expected. His greatest fear just then was that either the ladder ended prematurely or that there was a large gap in it. He tried once more with his foot but all he reached was the start of a large branch. He looked down -- his heart that had raced in panic grew overjoyed -- he had reached the ground, the ‘branch’ he had felt was a large root that bulged up out of the earth.

Oddly, the air was calm and stale, a faint gray smoke was suspended everywhere in the stagnation. The effect was eerie and electrical and lent the already dark, the already shadowy world down there an extra dimension of gloom.

The smell of fire and burning was raw and fresh.

There were enormous gaps and spaces between trees where different paths had long since been carved. Dead, decayed leaves, brown and crunchy, littered the earth alongside rocks and large boulders. The land was also marred by dips and hills.

The boy followed a green trail between dense bushes toward the omnipresent sound of water. The path ended in tall, green stems of overgrown reeds that blocked his sight entirely. A cold wind echoed from the right and shook the entangled vegetation though it was one gigantic mass, one immense blob. The sound deafened or muffled the effects of the events visually beyond his grasp. He extended his hands into the shoots and drew them to the side to expose a snippet of the larger universe before him. Out beyond, the main body of the forest ended in an unmistakable ‘line’ on the ground -- those parts of the ground that he could see -- onto a tightly-hewn grassy plane interrupted by a thin stream, by a snaky river nearby.

[Part Seven]

For a few moments there was silence, there was stillness. A deer of an exotic verity appeared, materialized from thin air. The animal turned its head from left to right and waited. Perched on the opposite side of the flowing, crackling current. It put its front left leg into the water tentatively before it moved the rest of its legs in to tread across to the other side. Behind that deer, in the shadowed underbrush, were glowing green eyes, bright eyes that hinted of a large herd elsewhere.

The single, lonely deer grazed quietly.

He was bored and looked overhead briefly. Up in the treetops there was darkness only. Every so often a single branch here and there shimmered in wet, dewy colors. He turned his eyes back down -- the cat sprung out of no where, from no where to land atop the animal. After a mere blink the deer was on the ground, on its side. The mouth was wide open though it had made no sound, the eyes were shut oddly -- or perhaps the blood that had poured form the open gash in the neck obscured that particular detail.

He got up from the cover and headed to the animal. The large cat, his friend, had walked to the river where he cleaned the blood from his hands, his face for he had killed the deer with one, singular bite. Then tired, he lay on his back along the grassy river bank. The boy did not approach out of fear that he might inadvertently arouse him from some deep sleep but the cat had seen him and waved him over to his side.

He removed what rags remained of his clothes and dunked himself into the deeper parts of the river. His friend had a strange smile and followed quickly. The two were face-to-face in the clear liquid, splashing water gently on to one another. The cat grabbed the small boy around his arms and gently rubbed his fur up against him.

"One ub yums ere," the boy spoke softly, water gurgled into his mouth with every other syllable. "Ramit sala save mon."

The animal was deceptively large. So much meat, so much meat. The hide was tough and it was the hardest part to do away with but it had to be done or else the flesh beneath would have been inaccessible. The cat carved the dense muscles from the breast beginning just under the arms with the claws of his hands. Those muscles that covered the ribcage ended at around where the waist would have been -- there the flesh was thin and the internal organs could be made out faintly through their contours and through their outlines.

The muscles were a chaotic mass that the cat further sliced into neat strips over the stones next to the carcass. Without prompt the boy brought forth several small rocks and dried twigs. He showed his friend how to start the fire. The cat took the meat and poked them through some of the branches in order to roast them over the fire that the boy artfully attended to.

Sometime while the two feasted the cat perched his ears up. A sound resonated through the trees, through the forest. He looked down to the child who was eating one of the sticks of meat unaware of the disturbance. A low, dull hum combound with the sounds of rocks crushing in the distance, even the land seemed to shake. In his mind he conjured a picture similar to the large metal object he had encountered the night before, a whole eternity ago -- but different in a way that he could not understand, comprehend. That mysterious red-black symbol flashed in his eyes but it went away, passed away quickly.

The meal ended shortly after that. The fire was put out by pouring sand and wet soil over the neat pile of stones and brown leaves that the boy had put together. What was left of the deer remained on its side on the ground. Already, overhead vultures and large birds circled, small dogs and other animals lurked half-in, half-out of the jungle around the small clearing.

The terrible sound was still there, still there but soft, distant -- muffled. Whatever it was, perhaps it had been driven away. Just to be safe he and the boy began to hike far from there, too.

[Part Eight]

To be sure the two were still well deep in the forest, rather it was that they had reached a portion of the land where the density of the trees had loosened to the point to where it was quite nearly a meadow. The cat was nervous and cautious about where he and the boy had come into. He would not let him wander off by himself to the point where he felt that the only way to restrain his carefree curiosity was by putting the child up on his shoulders.

The boy was heavy but he did not mind carrying the weight. He saw something -- a large object -- up ahead but instead of walking directly to it he trailed his own path that circumvented around the meadow through the trees. Low-hanging branches brushed against the boy’s face but the cat was very careful to make sure that nothing else harmed him.

When he tired a little and when he felt that the boy would not wander he put him down then lay himself across over a rock to bask in the cool air. He napped for a while, or he attempted to nap for a while but, in that fuzzy scope between the conscious and the unconscious minds he thought he had heard that hum, that rumble. Visions returned to him and to his horror. He got up, he took the boy by the hand and together the two jogged toward that obscure object that only slowly took on a definite and concrete form.

It was a house, old and ancient. There were no plants around it except for well-trimmed grass, there were no trees. Next to that construction, on either side, were large piles of rubble that could have been what was left of other, similar houses that had long since been destroyed. The ground immediately in front had large, flat thin rocks of black tar that crumbled to the touch.

The face of the building was made from a deep yellow mortar. He felt it, his friend, too, his fur often stuck onto the rough surface. Two sets of asymmetrical windows marked off the general internal outline.

At the front of the house was single, regular door, white in color. Oddly, it was metallic while everything else was wooden. He knocked but there was no answer. His friend looked into a side window -- within there was nothing but darkness.

The boy looked around in the back from the side. He went forth, the cat followed. The ground sloped down gradually to reveal a lower level formed from large, black stones. Similar rocks lined the scene of the ruins of the village. The two walked along the side of the house to the back where there was the edge of a cliff, of a tall cliff that overlooked a whole new cosmos, a whole new wilderness of teeming jungles, mountains, hills, valleys carved from strong rivers. Mist and fog rose from below in thick clouds.

Behind the house was a garden or the ruins of a garden much abused by time. Plants were overgrown with weeds and where the land had once been tilled and neatly trimmed there was now chaos and disorder. Before one of the red, brick walls, under a wide window was a small, square area set off by a thin, wire fence. A wooden box was within the pen next to a blue, plastic tub that had been full of water a long, long time ago. The rest of the enclosure was covered with wild flowers except for that patch of earth where there was a skeleton of a turtle that had fallen onto its back.

[Part Nine]

A door, a single door, tucked away in a nook under the shade of an overhang, a door open that all but beckoned them to enter. It was red, a deep red wood, there was a bronze doorknob that had rusted over in a putrid mass of green and gray deposits. On the other side, within the house, there was a large room lit only by the blue sky that broke through unblocked but unopened windows -- the only two along that side wall. The room was large and wide but empty -- or so they thought until they entered. As it turned out there was furniture there, hidden in obscurity. Two sofas lined the wall under the windows and arched against the second wall at a right angle to that where an oil painting, disfigured by dust and by time, hung in the shadows. There was a small and low table in the middle of the room but it had no top anymore -- the glass had shattered and fallen on the floor within its frame where pots of dirt and shards of pottery remained as well.

Along yet a third wall opposite the windows the two could see a series of bookshelves. The boy took one out whose spine he could see clearly in the post noon daylight. The words, though, were unrecognizable and badly eroded, the pages had been eaten out through the millennia by silverfish and by other wormy insects that had, too, long since died and withered into dust.

The cat wandered around a bit, too and promptly discovered that there were three doors. One door led to a room that faced the garden. It had more windows and was clearly a bedroom. There were spare items of furniture there: the mattress and the bedclothes, some tables made of a brittle, rotted wood, chairs, shelves, a large closet with clothing hung in clear and noisy sheaths of see-through plastic.

The boy jumped on the bed -- the springs were all right. He jumped up and down clearly enjoying himself for the first time. The cat had also relaxed and curled up on the floor under the light of a window.

The boy tired of jumping and was overcome with exhaustion. Quietly he tiptoed to the cat and when his friend was not looking he came down upon him and began to rub his tummy. He giggled while he spoke: "Riru mayov."

Back into the large room from the start he tried the second door but it was locked tight and would not budge. The third and last door was not really a door but an open passage. The room it led to was not a room but a thin, narrow hall without windows. It was completely and totally dark and formless.

He felt his way around with his hands. He found a large table but the chairs, what chairs he stumbled into, seemed to have been made of a wood that did not take well to aging for the substance decomposed into a grainy dust in his hands. Cabinets lined the back walls of one end of the corridor along with heavy metal objects that he quickly realized were the parts of a dismantled pump.

A stove and a sink carved into the ground. The oven had a large tray within but he dared not feel what it might contain. Around the base were ashes and small chips of wood. The porcelain tub was cracked in three and had only a drain.

It was a kitchen, a relic of a pre-modern age and, looking around further, he heard a creak and turned to his left. At the extreme end there was a door that swayed in the current of the wind. A window was bright and open in the small room it led to, a room full of crates, metal pipes and a couple of wide cylinders upright against a brick wall. He opened the door all the way to so that the light would flood into the kitchen. That was when he saw that at the other extreme end was an alcove, a small side room with the potential to reveal more.

The alcove was in the shape of a square and terminated directly into a large machine shop. There were more cabinets and shelves there than in any other part of the house he had been in yet. Glass jars were everywhere, stuffed everywhere, each contained a particular kind of nail or of screw, bolts and nuts, washers. Woods, panels and sticks. Tools and knives were neatly organized -- so organized and so finely kept that not even the workbenches had a smidgen of dust.

The boy found a spiral staircase and he followed it up slowly, slowly, until he reached a single door -- a white door with a shiny knob that turned completely and silently in his grip. He paused for a moment, he thought about what he was doing and almost backed off. Almost, but not quite.

[Part Ten]

The door opened in one, swift movement. There was more light upstairs, anyways, but the pattern of the interior had been altered significantly.

The rooms were dressed the same way but certainly they were much larger and better kept. Where the front door was he found stairs that led to the third floor. Next to it was a passage that continued through to the interior.

First, a small side door that again did not open. Second, came the kitchen -- though similar in appearance it was far more spacious, open and lit than the specimen he had encountered downstairs. He drank the cold water that flowed from the tap after he pulled the crank a couple of times. He had not noticed before until just then how thirsty he was -- and that there were some drops of blood on his clothes. His nose bleed again. His head felt hot and he was dizzy once more. He sat down on the cold floor until the sensations passed.

There was a door in the kitchen and before he would go any further he wanted to see what was on the other side. The room was oblong in shape and seemed to have been hastily constructed from the free space of the kitchen. There were two windows on the opposite side that showed him the garden, the edge of the cliff and beyond when he stood before it. The sun was no longer on that side of the sky and the air had cooled. The wind blew the heavy curtains in the air.

He looked around back. There was a bed and there seemed to be something or someone on it. He approached on tiptoe, he tried to say something but barely a whisper broke through his lips -- he was so afraid. The figure on the bed did not move or respond when he nudged it a little with his finger. He felt something hard and hesitated for a long while before he proceeded to peel away the bedcovers.

He clutched the blanket in his hands and pulled it back free -- he screamed and fell back to the floor where the pain he had caused himself made him stop screaming at least for a while. On the bed was a corpse, eaten out to the bone except for the head where the flesh remained intact. The mouth was wide open and seemed to have turned to face him -- the whole skeleton seemed to have moved. He screamed and the sound of it was loud enough to deafen the noise of what developed elsewhere in the house. The boy crawled back on the floor, he dragged the blanket along with him and caused the bony arm to outstretch to him.

A gray figure stepped into the room. He screamed once again. He thought all was over until he realized that it was the only cat. He ran to him with open arms.

The body remained half on the floor, half on the bed, motionless.

[Part Eleven]

After that disturbing incident his friend would not let him out of his sight. Even while napping he kept an eye open, watching what was going on. He took the boy back outside where they played in the yard for a while a rather unusual game. Sometimes he or the boy would pretend to be predator or prey. The games never got violent but by the end of the day they were beat.

They had discovered a lake nearby the remnant, unearthed ruins that had clear water that tasted about the same as the water that came form the tap in the house. Around that the boy sat on a rock at the very edge of the cliff -- his legs dangled down into the air, onto nothing. His friend curled up next to him but his attention was elsewhere for the moment.

He looked out upon the forests below, upon the woodlands below steadily drowning in the shadow of night. It seemed to him that he had seen something there within the trees -- that metal beast with the red-black insignia. It was a passing thought, a fleeting thought but he could not deny that he had heard it, too, the hum, the rumble. The wheels turning -- he got an image in his mind but he shook it off, it was unrecognizable and horrid. He saw himself in that metal vehicle along with -- he put the boy up on his shoulders and headed back to the safety of shelter.

The sky, that had been a twilight blue fading into purple, suddenly and unexpectedly was set ablaze in green fireballs. The violent thunder of massive detonations, upheavals was distant and muffled and did not surprised them more than the display of light. Out in the horizon, just above the treetops of forest below, the blasts converged onto an unseen construction whose only detectable parts where the debris sent hurtling into the air, into the surrounding countryside.

The two thought little about it, though and continued on with their business unfazed and unmolested. As abruptly as it appeared the green glow vanished and before they knew it, before they ever aware of it, evening had turned to night once more on third earth.

[Part Twelve]

The time was well past midnight, the moon was out in the heavens in the glory of its eerie, smoky ambiance. The two were again in the bedroom lower, stone walled cellar. The boy was on the bed, exposed. The cat was on the floor next to the door that he had propped shut. The first few hours of rest were especially calm but sometime during the late night, early morning, while the half-world slept, from the unknown upper floors came a soft and muffled whine, the same sort of whine that a door would make if it were caught in the midst of a strong current.

The cat opened his eyes then sat up. The noise was steady but was soon cut off when the door unseen had hit the wall -- the doorknob banged up against the unseen wall and sounded in telltale acuteness. He was already on the side of the bed nudging the boy wake before he had heard the heavy, dull footsteps that followed.

The boy was still tired but when he, too, had heard the footsteps from above he was perched and ready for action. His friend had moved the props from the door silently but swiftly. The door could then open but unfortunately it made a creak, there was no way to avoid that so the cat swung it open completely in one turn. The thing from upstairs responded by giving a loud moan or a groan and up-paced its footsteps.

The two were in the large, living room headed to the side door when they heard the unseen creature begin to descend the staircase. The onslaught would take only second after that but fortunately for them they were out of the side door and out of the house in time. They ran to the dense and protective forests near the edge of the cliff that extended for miles from one end of the horizon to the other.

The boy looked back while on his friend’s shoulders. There were lights on inside the house. But that was that last that he saw of it. They stumbled upon a concrete embankment along the thick underbrush that fed into stairs -- also of concrete -- that led down to the forest below. Hesitantly the cat began to descend the rough steps for he feared that the monster that haunted his mind might still lurk down there beneath but he also feared that the other thing from the house might strike from no where.

When at last they had reached the end it felt though they were in a world all to themselves again. They hiked further inland until they reached a tree wide enough, strong enough to hold them. He climbed and on a thick branch several feet above the ground he and the boy spent the rest of the night in sleep.

[Part Thirteen]

The cat awoke first, again, he had the boy cradled in his arms. He petted his hair back and noticed that there was blood, a lot of blood, under his nose, around his mouth, some of it had even smeared all over his own fur. He was shocked but the effect was temporary -- he began to wipe away the dried blood with his fingers. From the ears, from the corner of the eyes trickled small drops of that fresh, dense red liquid.

The boy only then awoke and he seemed visibly tired, unrested and debilitated. He could barely lift his head -- that was reddening, throbbing and heating up -- he could hardly move his arms anymore. His voice had left him but he was able to whisper: "O emo cita go reucet."

Bright sunlight shone upon them from the large gaps in the canopy. The air was cold but calm and silent, scented in floral aromas intermingled with only trace hints of smoke. Suddenly the branches of the tree swayed and echoed in the rustling of the leaves that rubbed together, suddenly there was something else, too -- the cat’s eyes opened wide.

It was the humming, the rumbling. He looked down, across to the side. Bushes and shrubs in the distance were crushed under the large, tracked wheels of that metal beast. He saw a red-black image but by then he had quickly turned away.

He took the boy onto his chest and managed to secure his arms and hands around his neck while he climbed further up the three. His claws dug deeply into the brittle bark but unfortunately it was too loose and too dry and would acome to the bare, sticky wood beneath. His climb was thusly hampered and on top of that he stopped often to resecure the boy’s hold.

The child was still responsive but so weak, so incredibly weak. He stopped -- he could not climb any higher. He was there on the length of the trunk ten feet above the lowest, reachable branch, the other branches over him he only then realized were small and thin and could not possibly support their weight.

His heart raced -- the boy said or screamed something, he could not tell exactly, not that it would have mattered anyway, for the sounds of the metal vehicle were loud and omnipresent. The tree vibrated violently, it shook in his grip and the bark he held on to began to give way. He began to climb down but it was too little, too late. He felt the boy slipping and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing. He put his legs together in a way that could keep the boy from falling all the way through in case of the worst.

He stopped moving but the tree did not stop rattling. He did not know how long he remained there, motionless there fifty feet above the rocky earth. Time seemed to have stopped, the seconds seemed to take hours to tick away. Meanwhile that metal contraption just would not stop coming closer, it just would not go away.

The last he heard before his body failed him were screams and shouts from below -- from the red-black adorned object that had only then stopped, that gradually loudened with the fall.

[Part Fourteen]

For some time there was only darkness but not silence, not silence exactly. He heard voices unrecognizable, incoherent, the language was different from the boy’s and inexplicably familiar. Stern and soft, paced and panicked, gradually he became aware of the differences between the voices to such an acute degree that he could actually tell them apart.

"The mutants would be blowing anything up for a while," one voice spoke, quickly, forcefully. Determined?

"That ship must have --" some of the words took too long, too long to form meaning in his head, "Jagga only knows what might have happened had the mutants got what they were after."

Once head separated them -- the male from the female -- only then did the very words fall into place. Yes, it was language and in the shock of realization it occurred to him that he what was being said, the he understood at last what had happened to him.

"So much death, what a waste and for batteries only?"

"Nothing else survived the explosions."

The memories returned like a tidal wave, like an avalanche at full blast.

His eyes opened. He was flat on his back, naked but wrapped tightly in a white blanket. He saw the sky: the clouds evolved in faint mists, in vaporous forms to reveal the bright blue heaves that seemed to go on and on, eternally, eternally.

"I’m Panthro, I’m a Thundercat."

He sat up, the covering quickly acame off of him.

"I remember! I remember!"

"You’ve been injured," Pumyra said. She tried to hold him back, she tried to refit the blankets around him.

"Where is he? Where’s the boy?"

She was silent and helpless while he got up to his feet.

Panthro was wobbly and for the first time he had the oddest sensation on his left arm. Above the elbow the fur had been ripped to expose flesh underneath: red, bright red, throbbing red but not bleeding for it had been nursed expertly.

"You're arm’s broken," she said, her voice was pathetically thin, almost inaudible, "fractured --"

"Where’s the boy, Pumyra? I must see him!"

"You have other injuries, you shouldn’t be up --"

She arose, her eyes pointed to the vehicle whose outline could be seen clearly through the green foliage. It was the same vehicle that he had heard, that he had long tried to dodge and to escape.

How foolish, he thought to himself, how foolish.

Liono and Tygra stood before the bushes, the two would not step closer to the Thunder Tank. Only Bengali moped around the back. Panthro had never seen his friends like that, especially the black smith -- like -- bloodshot eyes, he kept turning his head away, he left covering his mouth so that no one could see the quivering manner with which his lips curled.

He ran to the white tiger but he stepped back defensively into the trees.

The Thunder Tank as empty except for the back where the trunk’s lid was up, open. A blue blanket covered the form of the small boy. Panthro recognized him merely from the shape of the head alone. In a rage anger he ripped off the cover, the boy’s body was momentarily lifted by the harsh and swift action but when completely exposed he fell back with a dull thud.

There was no reaction, there was no movement. The boy’s eyes were open, mouth tightly shut. Blood had oozed out of the ears and of the nose. Fragments of decayed bark and green leaves clung to him, adhered to the dried blood.

Panthro began to pry off those things from he boy’s face while the other Thundercats clawed up enough courage to come closer, to come to his side. "There was nothing we could do," Tygra spoke through shaky words, "it wasn’t the fall that killed him, it was the brain trauma, the brain injury was too great."

"No, no, no, no life, no!"

He cradled the body in his arms and sat on the floor, on the ground while the others watched helplessly.

Tygra began: "His last words were --"

"No life! Why should a mutant, a lunatic have life and he no breath at all? Never, never." With each impending word he shook his head more and more violently though he would decapitate himself. "Look here," he pointed to the lips, "look here," to the eyes, "Look!" He rocked back and forth, left and right. He brought the boy’s face up to his and kissed him once on the cheek before he broke into tears. "Good night, good night," he said to the dead body.

His arms gave way, his body fell forward over the boy, he was still, he was motionless. Tygra knelt down over Panthro, he put his hand firmly under his neck. He felt there for a moment or two and then he shot back in terror. He looked around to the others then at last to Liono: "He’s dead, Panthro’s dead."